A personal memory of the Rev. Jesse Jackson

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, an unwavering civil rights activist and two-time Presidential candidate, has been called to glory. He was 84.

His commitment to equal rights and humanity was unparalleled. And even into his final days, he still spoke for justice and faith. He came into a broken world, and did his best to help heal it wherever he could.

I am reminded this morning of personal anecdote – not that I ever had the pleasure of meeting Rev. Jackson – but I still need to tell this story.

It’s my junior year in college – the 1983-84 semester. I’m the music director at my college radio station, WHCL-FM. And in our efforts to acquire as much music product as possible, I struck up an arrangement with Sugarhill Records – the New Jersey-based rap label – to send us their newest releases. Okay, for me that meant getting new releases of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, which made me very happy.

But in 1983, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five split up – Flash and two of his bandmates moved to Elektra Records as “Grandmaster Flash”, while the rest of the group remained on Sugarhill Records as “Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five.” Is it confusing? Of course it is. But work with me on this.

Melle Mel and his crew eventually released a tribute record to Rev. Jesse Jackson, mostly based on Jackson’s successful diplomatic efforts to bring back a fallen Navy pilot whose plane had crashed beyond enemy lines. Jackson at the time was also running for President – and even winning a primary or two – and Sugarhill Records capitalized on the publicity.

Such was the record “Jesse.”

It’s a cool track, and we played it more than a few times on WHCL. Seriously. We played it a lot.

And then we couldn’t play it for a while.

Yep. Our faculty advisor told us to take the record off the air.

Why was this?

Well, back in the day, there was this mandate for equal time in Presidential campaigns. The faculty advisor felt that the “Jesse” track was a political advertisement, and if WHCL-FM played it, we would then have to provide equal time to other Presidential candidates.

I mean, yeah, there was a Ronald Reagan rap record out there …

And no, I’m not going to try to find a Lyndon LaRouche hip hop track. No I am not.

A compromise was reached. We could resume playing “Jesse” after the New York State primaries concluded, at which time the song would not fall into the grey area of an advertising campaign.

As we remember the legendary man of faith … let us remember him in one of his greatest speeches.

This is the “Keep Hope Alive” speech from the 1988 Democratic National Convention.