In this April 3, 1968, file photo, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stands with other civil rights leaders on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., a day before he was assassinated in approximately the same place. From left are Hosea Williams, Jesse Jackson, King, and Ralph Abernathy. Credit: Charles Kelly / AP, File
Editor’s note: This story first appeared in Stephen Henderson’s “I Have Questions” Substack. Henderson is the founder of and executive advisor for BridgeDetroit.
All of our lives have an arc.
They have trajectory.
And none of us control over where it begins, or how far it will carry us.
It’s about the journey — what you see and touch, what you experience, whom you travel beside, and the way time sculpts the ride.
Is there a modern American life with an arc of consequence quite like Jesse Jackson’s?
He died today, at 84. He was born in an era of Jim Crow and lynching. He spent his entire adult life trying to bend the large arc of the universe toward more justice for all of us.
The images above are what leapt to mind when I heard of Jackson’s passing.
In one, he stands in his mid-20s alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, a day before King was assassinated.
That was 1968.
In the other, Jackson, in his mid-60s, joins throngs of Americans in Grant Park in Chicago to celebrate the election of the first African American president, Barack Obama.
esse Jackson reacts to Barack Obama’s win in 2008: ‘I felt such hope in my heart.’ Credit: NY Daily News via Getty Images
That was 2008.
Jackson’s work was part of what carried this nation from one moment — a wrenching and tumultuous setback in the pursuit of equality — to the other, perhaps the most recognizable milestone of American racial progress.
What strikes me about these images is their layered emotional contrast.
In the 1968 photo, Jackson has a slight smile.
He said years later that King had been giving him some guff about his casual attire — they were heading to dinner after meeting with striking sanitation workers in Memphis. King was finally in a good mood, after days of feeling low, Jackson recalled.
It is a light moment before the heaviest imaginable.
In the 2008 photo, Jackson has tears in his eyes.
The weight, the elation, the significance of that moment pushed him to the opposite end of his emotions.
I’ve often wondered whether Jackson was recalling that moment in 1968 when he was crying in 2008. Whether those were tears of joy, relief, painful remembrance — or something closer to completion.
Few Americans have stood so close to the country’s worst moments, and then lived long enough to stand in the glow of one of its best.
That kind of life doesn’t just mark time. It measures distance.
I don’t know exactly what was in those tears in 2008.
But I know this: few lives give us a clearer picture of how long the road has been — and how far it still runs.
Jesse Jackson walked almost the whole stretch of it.
Henderson is a native Detroiter who has nearly 30 years of journalism experience as a writer and editor, and a deep-rooted connection with the city that birthed him.
A winner of the Pulitzer Prize,...
More by Stephen Henderson
Jesse Jackson: From Memphis to Grant Park
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Editor’s note: This story first appeared in Stephen Henderson’s “I Have Questions” Substack. Henderson is the founder of and executive advisor for BridgeDetroit.
All of our lives have an arc.
They have trajectory.
And none of us control over where it begins, or how far it will carry us.
It’s about the journey — what you see and touch, what you experience, whom you travel beside, and the way time sculpts the ride.
Is there a modern American life with an arc of consequence quite like Jesse Jackson’s?
He died today, at 84. He was born in an era of Jim Crow and lynching. He spent his entire adult life trying to bend the large arc of the universe toward more justice for all of us.
The images above are what leapt to mind when I heard of Jackson’s passing.
In one, he stands in his mid-20s alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, a day before King was assassinated.
That was 1968.
In the other, Jackson, in his mid-60s, joins throngs of Americans in Grant Park in Chicago to celebrate the election of the first African American president, Barack Obama.
That was 2008.
Jackson’s work was part of what carried this nation from one moment — a wrenching and tumultuous setback in the pursuit of equality — to the other, perhaps the most recognizable milestone of American racial progress.
What strikes me about these images is their layered emotional contrast.
In the 1968 photo, Jackson has a slight smile.
He said years later that King had been giving him some guff about his casual attire — they were heading to dinner after meeting with striking sanitation workers in Memphis. King was finally in a good mood, after days of feeling low, Jackson recalled.
It is a light moment before the heaviest imaginable.
In the 2008 photo, Jackson has tears in his eyes.
The weight, the elation, the significance of that moment pushed him to the opposite end of his emotions.
I’ve often wondered whether Jackson was recalling that moment in 1968 when he was crying in 2008. Whether those were tears of joy, relief, painful remembrance — or something closer to completion.
Few Americans have stood so close to the country’s worst moments, and then lived long enough to stand in the glow of one of its best.
That kind of life doesn’t just mark time. It measures distance.
I don’t know exactly what was in those tears in 2008.
But I know this: few lives give us a clearer picture of how long the road has been — and how far it still runs.
Jesse Jackson walked almost the whole stretch of it.
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Stephen Henderson
Henderson is a native Detroiter who has nearly 30 years of journalism experience as a writer and editor, and a deep-rooted connection with the city that birthed him. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize,... More by Stephen Henderson