At the main public memorial service for civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson on March 6, former Democratic presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Bill Clinton used portions of their remarks to criticize the political climate under President Donald Trump, prompting backlash from an unexpected source: Jackson’s own son, Jesse Jackson Jr.
The day after the memorial, Jesse Jackson Jr. publicly scolded the political heavyweights, saying their comments veered away from honoring his father and instead turned the moment into another partisan jab-fest.
According to a report from the Daily Mail [1], Jackson Jr. said the former presidents “do not know Jesse Jackson” and that they framed his father’s life through a political lens he did not share. “Yesterday, I listened for several hours to three United States presidents who do not know Jesse Jackson,” he said at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters during a second more private memorial gathering.
The first memorial at Chicago’s House of Hope was supposed to celebrate Jackson’s decades-long civil-rights career, but the speeches by the former Democratic presidents also referenced the current political environment and divisions in the country – with Trump serving as the implied villain.
In other words, what was supposed to be a farewell to a civil-rights icon sometimes sounded suspiciously like a Democratic campaign stop with an anti-Trump grievance list – only with better choir music.
Jackson Jr. had made it clear beforehand that the service wasn’t meant to be turned into another “Orange Man Bad” lecture tour, urging speakers to leave politics out of the memorial. “Do not bring your politics out of respect to Rev. Jesse Jackson, and the life that he lived, to these ongoing services,” he said after his father’s death. “Come respectful, and come to say thank you.”
Despite the clear request to keep politics out of the services, the former presidents chose not to listen and instead turned at least part of the public memorial into another platform for partisan criticism. In doing so, they managed to disrespect both the wishes of Jackson’s family and the solemn purpose of the occasion. But is anyone really surprised by this???