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The Funeral of Reverend Jesse Jackson. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired March 06, 2026 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[13:00:00]

RABBI STEVEN JACOBS, PROGRESSIVE FAITH FOUNDATION: He challenged a no-talk policy while negotiating with despots and enemies. His life was dedicated to, no talk, then no action.

No one must -- no one could talk with Bashar al-Assad, with Hezbollah, Hamas, which is why Prime Minister Shimon Peres welcomed us to Israel to learn from his friend Reverend Jesse Jackson.

This is why our visit to Belgrade to gain the release of three American soldiers, one of whom is my friend and -- Mr. Gonzales, who is here today, he knew how to convince Milosevic to release the three POWs.

In my tradition, the Talmud discusses being a prisoner is the hardest of all suffering, and teaches that a synagogue may even sell a Torah scroll to fulfill the commandment of redeeming the captives.

And now a promise I made to Reverend Jackson two decades ago that I can now fulfill. We were sitting alone and he said: "When I die, tell them the truth."

We were discussing the fallout from his conversation regarding his growing up in Greenville, South Carolina. A reporter published a reference made about the Jews in New York without asking Reverend Jackson what he was referring to. It led to a number of Jewish leaders calling Reverend Jackson an antisemite.

I know Jesse Jackson and have traveled the world with him since 1967. There's not an antisemitic bone in his body...

(APPLAUSE)

JACOBS: ... nor in his mind, nor in his heart. When three Israeli soldiers, Goldwasser, Regev and Shalit, were captives, their families thought they were dead. Reverend Jackson met with Hezbollah, and he got from them that they were alive and well.

We met with the families in Tel Aviv and told them the news that they were alive and well. And they hugged and they kissed and they cried Reverend Jackson until they couldn't stop. That's not an antisemite.

So, I -- Reverend Jackson could reach out to Gorbachev, gaining the release of numbers of Russian Refuseniks to come to America. There's not an antisemitic bone in this man's body. (APPLAUSE)

JACOBS: I want to tell you a story he told which influenced my whole career and my life. He told me the story of Muhammad Ali, who was in a non-title fight, and knocked down, bloody in the eighth round.

His corner told him not to come out. But Muhammad Ali got up, wiped the blood, came out and knocked out his opponent. Afterwards, Muhammad Ali was asked: "Mr. Ali, you were told not to go out. How come?"

He said: "The ground is no place for a champion."

We are all champions. There's no ground for any one of us.

(APPLAUSE)

JACOBS: And now, when Reverend Jesse Jackson enters into the pearly gates, above all, God will welcome him with this greeting: Oh, my God, you're Jesse Jackson.

(LAUGHTER)

JACOBS: You are somebody.

(CHEERING)

JACOBS: You are somebody. Come work with me. Come work with me. I need you. The world needs you to keep hope alive. Keep hope alive.

God bless you, Jesse Jackson and your beautiful family.

(CHEERING)

STEVE MUNSEY, FAMILY CHRISTIAN CENTER: I'm a minister of the gospel, and I just want to take a moment to say, thank you, Jesus.

(CHEERING)

MUNSEY: I want to give him all the glory. I want to give him all the praise.

Could I have somebody who is a believer put the left hand and the right hand together and give him a mighty, mighty praise?

[13:05:10]

(CHEERING)

MUNSEY: I come just with a few words from 1st Timothy 5:17. I have come to declare double honor.

Well, he was there too, Reverend Jesse Jackson. There she is. She's sitting on the end. Don't ever forget. There's a Jackie Jackson.

(CHEERING) MUNSEY: After I have met the Jacksons for many years, I thought Jesse made Jackie. I will leave that to the rest of your imagination. They told me a story.

(LAUGHTER)

MUNSEY: I promise I won't tell the good part.

Jesse and Jackie were going to college and ended up in a phone booth.

(LAUGHTER)

MUNSEY: Come on, now. Be nice. Whatever -- for all of you that are under 28 years of age, you don't know what a phone booth is.

(LAUGHTER)

MUNSEY: Shame on you. The rest of this, we carried coins to make sure that we could stop and call somebody.

Immediately, Jesse took the phone from Jackie because she had called her parents. And Jesse said -- and this stuck with me. And it stuck with me all of my life, this story. And we will continue.

Jesse said to Jackie's parents: "May I marry your daughter? I will take full responsibility of her being my wife." And this is the best part. "I will do it the rest of my life."

(CHEERING)

MUNSEY: He did.

So what did I observe? He was kind of an icon to me growing up, being influenced by First Church of Deliverance many years ago, and Maddie Poole (ph), and my daddy, who was a preacher, and I'm the son of a preacher man.

And I noticed he got busy after the phone booth real quick. I was like, Santita, Jesse Jr., Jonathan, Yusef, Ashley. But it doesn't stop there. He expands his family to the poor, the oppressed, the unqualified, the sick, the poverty, the misunderstood, the homelessness, the bankrupt, the uneducated, the down and out, and to those that didn't have a voice.

So I wanted to know. I wanted to know, how can this man have so much influence? So I would study him. I'd study sometimes his bloodshot eyes, and I'd study him the way he walked. We flew together. We'd talk hours together.

What is it about him? I want it. I want his cape. I want his gift. And then it hit me. This man knows how to forgive.

(CHEERING)

MUNSEY: And whether we'd be in a private plane or a public plane or wherever we were going, to march or to be in a convention, I could never get him stuck on somebody who disliked him. He just kept moving on.

[13:10:08]

Somewhere, he got the revelation of the 17th Chapter of Luke when Jesus says, it's impossible that offenses are going to come. And all need to know that somebody's going to tick you off, say something negative about you.

But Jesus turns around and says, forgive him seven times 70. Peter speaks up trying to be the most spiritual among the 12 and says, lord, if we got to forgive people that many times in one day, increase my faith.

Then I learned from Jesse Jackson that the level of your forgiveness is at the level of your faith. Holding unforgiveness, he said to me, or a grudge is willingly to chain yourself to the person who harmed you. It's a form of self-imposed slavery.

He said, sovereign forgiveness is your declaration of emancipation. It's not about saying what you did was OK. It was about saying what you did will no longer have power over my inner kingdom. It's not a gift you give them. It's an act of self-liberation you perform for yourself.

You don't forgive because they deserve mercy. You forgive because you deserve peace.

(APPLAUSE)

MUNSEY: I'm almost done. So you won't have to say amen real loud to give me off the platform.

(LAUGHTER)

MUNSEY: But I'm going to make a confession and then it's real nice to see -- I'm real nervous among you presents, because I have heard you all my life and I never knew I'd have the privilege to get to talk in front of you. This is -- this is scaring this white boy to half to death here today, because...

(LAUGHTER)

MUNSEY: But when I hear this choir sing, I want to be black, because ain't nobody can sing.

(LAUGHTER)

MUNSEY: My wife is going to pinch me over there and say, you should have been nice.

It was about 12:00, September 17, the button was pushed at the bottom in the lobby; 16 floors up was Jesse Jackson. Jackie was standing beside him. He was coughing. The rider to the elevator was death, and death got off and said, it's time.

But you must know something about Jesse Jackson and let every person in this room know that, when death walks up to you, like he walked up to Jesse Jackson, he started coughing about 12:15. You could tell he was struggling and there was a battle, but he had one more fight, one more fight.

Death walked up and said, I'm taking you out. And Jesse said, you're not taking me out. I'm a born-again, blood-bought, Jesus Christ- carrying cross. I have been filled and sanctified. Keep your hands off of me.

As death moved, Jesse and his spirit began to debate with death. Oh, death, where is thy sting? Oh, grave, where is thy victory? And the moment the phone rang in the phone booth, and Jesse grabbed the phone and said, hello? Jesse, you fought a good fight. You kept the faith and you finished the course.

And then the last three seconds, I did something for all of you children and it will be given to you. I was trying to sneak his ties out of his room, but I had to go through mama. But every one of you will get a tie. We pray for it. And I hope that when you wear it or you display it, you will feel like somebody.

(CHEERING)

GREG MATHIS, FORMER JUDGE AND ARBITRATOR: I am somebody. I am somebody.

(CHEERING)

MATHIS: Mother Jackson, my God siblings, my dearest friend, Jonathan, grandkids, those were the three words that I heard 50 years ago this month that changed my life forever.

[13:15:07]

Many of you know I was a jailed youth, troubled youth, jailed in the city of Detroit. Met Reverend Jackson there on one of his tours to uplift black youth. Fought my way back to meet him, I was so compelled by what he said.

And I said: "Mr. Jackson, I want to help you fight white people."

(LAUGHTER)

MATHIS: I didn't know how to say it. I meant social justice. My brothers were Black Panthers back in the housing projects, so I had a little consciousness and I knew I wanted to fight.

He said: "What are you here for?"

I said: "For carrying a gun."

He said: "Well, you got to drop your gun and pick up your books. Then you can help me."

(CHEERING) MATHIS: He said: "I will tell you what. You leave here. Go to college. Then you can come back and work with me," my singular reason for going to college.

(APPLAUSE)

MATHIS: Sure enough, when he got back, when I came out, he was organizing a Detroit '83 campaign, when Jonathan came in town, made me carry his suitcase.

(LAUGHTER)

MATHIS: Jesse Jr. had me put him on my back. They really abused me, you all, as kids.

(LAUGHTER)

MATHIS: Now I make Jonathan carry my briefcase.

(LAUGHTER)

MATHIS: But, no, indeed, I was mentored By reverend from that day on. He assigned me to Mother Jackie's best friend in Detroit who ran our PUSH operation and that rainwater.

She then mentored me. I ran the operation in Detroit. And then when we ran for president in 1988, I was part of the management of the state the largest victory we had. And so our relationship came full circle. And then some years later, in '97, in fact, I left after being elected, youngest judge in Detroit 15 years out of jail, I left that after a few years to serve as his vice president of Rainbow/PUSH.

Well, then came television calling. And I was a little scared to tell him I had to offer because I'm loyal to you. You're the reason I'm here. So I got the nerve up. I went and I showed him. And I said: "Reverend, these white folks won't give us the money for our story. What you want to do? You look at the contract and you tell me what to do."

He looked at it. He said: "Oh, yes, you got to take this."

(LAUGHTER)

MATHIS: And he said: "But, primarily, I want you to take this so that you can spread our message of hope to millions and millions of people who you will inspire to overcome their obstacles as we have overcome ours."

And so, for the last 27 years, indeed, thank you all, the longest- running black host in the history of America.

(APPLAUSE)

MATHIS: Thank you, Reverend Jackson. We have been able to spread that message to millions of people for 27 years, all because God blessed the Reverend Jackson. Lastly, people often ask, what was the best wisdom? And he's the

wisest man any of us have ever met, no doubt. What piece of wisdom? I said: "Well, it was about really when I met him. I was giving him the poor man's story. Reverend Jackson, I don't have -- my mama died when I was a teenager. I don't have a daddy. And I'm living in the projects with my brothers and they doing all" -- he said: "Well, I don't have a daddy either."

He said: "I had three daddies. I had three last names." He said: "While you're feeling sorry for yourself, Jesus could have been a hopeless street youth. But he fought back." And the way he continued to talk about it, some way, I seemed that he was reflecting on his own life.

And so I began later to put it together. And I said, yes, indeed, Jesse Jackson could have been a street youth born under the same circumstances, born in substandard housing, in Greenville, three last names, what is sure who his father really was. Folks gossiped.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Come on now. Come on now.

MATHIS: Joseph can't have no baby. Who that baby daddy? Didn't have the right to vote in Greenville under King Herod. The government was on his back, J. Edgar Hoover.

[13:20:17]

He didn't run to the corner and complain, oh, my mama was a teenage mama, I don't have the right to vote. The government is on my back. Give me a swig of that wine. He didn't do that. He said, I am the son of Helen Burns, and I have come and sent by God to change my condition and the condition of this world.

And I bet you he would say to us today that we are all sons and daughters of God. And if we continue to fight, we continue to pray, we continue to march, we will continue to change our condition and the condition of this world.

(APPLAUSE)

MATHIS: Keep hope alive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on, let's thank all of these speakers.

(APPLAUSE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The work of Reverend Jackson is alive. The Rainbow/PUSH Coalition is alive and strong. Can we show some extra love as we welcome the son of Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson? Please welcome the CEO of the Rainbow/PUSH coalition, Mr. Yusef Jackson.

YUSEF JACKSON, SON OF REVEREND JESSE JACKSON: We gather here today to pay tribute, to give thanks and to celebrate the life of a man who occupied many spaces in our lives, in this nation and in the world, for many of us, our beloved leader, for others, our brother, for so, so many, our friend, a grandfather to my five children, a husband of 64 years to my mother...

(APPLAUSE)

JACKSON: ... and, to me, my father, Reverend Jesse L. Jackson Sr.

That was part of his beauty. My mother would often say: "Wow, your father has such remarkable range that in one moment he can be way up here, and the next moment he comes right down to eye level."

His body of work spans more than six decades, so vast that no single homegoing service can fully capture it, but it's both an honor and a heavy responsibility to try. As I grieve and wrestle with my faith in the loss -- in the wake of this loss, the Scripture that says, weeping may endure for night, but joy comes in the morning, sits heavily in my belly.

I find myself balancing the sorrow of the dark night, comforting my kids and answering their questions about the loss of life and the cycle of life and managing my own personal grief against God's promise that joy comes in the morning.

And what a morning God gave my father, 84 years.

(CHEERING)

JACKSON: He would often say: "Yusef, that Martin died at age 39. He was taken from us far too soon." He said: "Malcolm died at 39."

He never thought he would live this long, a life so full of work and witness, a life and legacy we honor publicly and proudly, his record standing firmly on the side of justice. It will stand the test of time. The reverend always taught me that we should measure someone, not simply by where they ended up, but where they started from.

He was born out of wedlock, deep in the valley of the Jim Crow South, under the heavy boot of Southern apartheid, as a boy teased for having three last names, and he struggled with a stutter. Yet he rose from those beginnings to become extraordinary, to become a blessing to the world.

And he always knew what set him on the right path, a loving mother, a family, a welcoming church, a close-knit community that helped guide a young boy of immense energy, intelligence, and ambition. My father was what Dr. King called maladjusted to injustice. He simply never accepted it. He went to jail at 17 years old in Greenville, South Carolina, protesting for the right to use a public library.

[13:25:05]

And even near the end of his life, he never spoke to me about his existential struggle with life, his inability to express himself clearly, the loss of his gifts, his inability to walk and move. Instead, he urged me to organize churches and pastors to help feed millions of people who were affected by food insecurity as a result of the loss of SNAP benefits. He carried a well-read Bible, not as a symbol, but as a guide. He

lived a revolutionary Christian faith rooted injustice, nonviolence, and the moral righteousness of standing with the least of these. He practiced that faith sometimes on his knees, but more often on his feet, on picket lines and jails, at makeshift hospitals and parks in New York City comforting AIDS patients and in communities across the country.

He often said: "I intend to die with my shoes on."

And he taught us that, if you're faithful over a few things, God will make you ruler over, and he taught us that with faith the size of a mustard seed,you can move mountains, win peace, free hostages, give hope to the masses.

So we remember him not for what he accumulated, but for what he gave. He used his gifts to give voice to the voiceless, free prisoners and build the Rainbow Coalition, bringing together the rejected stones of society, instilling hope in them and reminding them that, as God's children, they are somebody special.

He was deeply involved in the political struggles of his time, but his gift was that he could rise above them. It's not about the left-wing or the right wing. It takes two wings to fly. For him, the goal was always the moral center. His campaigns called America to move from racial battlegrounds to economic common ground and onto moral high ground.

And that vision allowed him to transcend the limitations of his circumstances. He endured insults and dismissals, rejection, yet he kept appealing to our better angels and urged us to keep on keeping on. Even as his body began to fail, his spirit and imagination never did.

He talked about organizing a peace mission to Ukraine. He wanted to appeal directly to Putin. He wanted to organize ministers to help negotiate peace in Haiti. The reverend's mind and will was strong even as his body failed him. He was very clear about the challenges we face today.

He believed the progress made during what historians call the Second Reconstruction, the era that grew out of the civil rights movement and expanded democracy for millions, was now facing renewed resistance from the highest levels of our government, the foolish denial of threats to democracy and to decency, corrosive inequality, catastrophic climate change, endless wars, a renewed arms race, global pandemics and more.

And he reminded us that, in each of these crises, it is always the least of these who suffer first and suffer the most. And that conviction shaped his ministry.

In his final months, he spent a lot of time with his grandchildren, private time, no moms and dads allowed. He loved it and they loved it. And after he passed, I asked each of my children, Skye, Yusef, Cassius, Atticus, Matthias, what was their last conversation with their grandfather?

I asked, what did he say to you? Each of them, separately and individually, thought for a moment and told me: "Dad, granddad told me he loved me."

(APPLAUSE)

JACKSON: And those are the last words I remember him ever saying to me as well.

Wherever he traveled, he made time for children at schools, churches and hospitals, even in prisons. He believed that inside every child was a somebody waiting to emerge and that, with faith and support and hope, they can achieve excellence. He would say: "I know because I was one of them."

And, today, his legacy will not be carried forward by family alone. This type of work does not pass by blood. It passes by spirit. Thus, it is in his name that we have committed ourselves that the Rainbow Coalition will continue.