with Yolanda Caraway and Leah Daughtry of the book , “ For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics ” that pays tribute to Jackson ’ s role in their historic rise to political power .
Beyond politics , Jackson ’ s White House campaigns also greatly influenced the careers of many black journalists , who for the first time got the opportunity to cover a presidential race .
As the Newsweek correspondent on the 1984 and 1988 campaigns , I was one of them . Others in the 1984 Jackson campaign press corps included Jack White for Time magazine , Kenneth Walker for ABC News , George Curry for The Chicago Tribune , Earl Caldwell for the New York Daily News , Gerald Boyd and Ron Smothers for The New York Times , A ’ lelia Bundles for NBC News , Marquita Pool for CBS News and photographers Jacques Chenet and Bruce Talamon for Newsweek and Time , respectively . Walker , Curry , Boyd and I later became White House correspondents for our publications .
Jackson once joked that I had made him “ famous ,” and he had made me “ great ,” referring to the many stories I reported on his presidential campaigns .
Of course , Jackson was a well-known civil rights leader long before 1984 . And yet with all his media coverage and worldwide fame , Jackson still has never been given the thanks he deserves for changing the face of the Democratic Party and moving the nation forward as only he could have done .
At a campaign stop somewhere in Ohio during his 1984 presidential campaign , an elderly Black woman had the best response to the conventional wisdom that Jackson could not win .
“ They say that Rev . Jackson cannot win ,” she said . “ But he be winning every time he ’ s up on that stage debating them white people and he ain ’ t got no basketball in his hand .”
If Kamala Harris becomes president in November , Jesse Jackson will “ be winning ” again . And so , too , will America . n
Sylvester Monroe , a senior fellow at the University of California ’ s Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy , is an awardwinning journalist and former White House correspondent who covered the 1984 presidential campaign of the Rev . Jesse Jackson .
( Courtesy : National Archives and Records Administration )
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