With the fight to preserve voting rights, Jesse Jackson's message still resonates

0:00Jesse Jackson:My fellow Americans, it is my honor to introduce the next president of the United States of America, the Reverend Jesse Lewis Jackson.

0:14Raphael Warnock:In 1984, Reverend Jesse Jackson took the stage at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. It was his first presidential campaign, and his speech was an urgent call to action. We are not a perfect people, yet we are called to a perfect mission. Our mission to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless, to teach the illiterate, to provide jobs for the jobless, and to choose the human race over the nuclear race. Jackson's rousing remarks called upon voters to be a part of a rainbow coalition of disenfranchised Americans and people of color. My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised.

1:10They are restless and seek relief.

1:13Raphael Warnock:They have voted in record numbers. They have invested the faith, hope, and trust that they have in us.

1:21Jesse Jackson:Well, let me just tell you that as a young kid growing up in public housing down in Savannah, Georgia, Jesse Jackson captured my imagination.

1:32Raphael Warnock:Jackson's message resonated with a young Raphael Warnock, now a Democratic senator from Georgia and the first black senator in the state's history. While Jackson didn't win the nomination in 1984, nor during his second presidential run in 1988, his campaigns reshaped Democratic politics.

1:52Jesse Jackson:I witnessed him call America to live up to its ideals. Watching him do that in real time inspired me. When he said I am somebody, I believed him.

2:03Raphael Warnock:Jackson died last week at the age of 84, but he leaves a lasting legacy. Consider this. As Congress debates voter ID laws and the Supreme Court reconsiders provisions of the Voting Rights Act, where does the movement Jackson helped build go from here?

2:23Raphael Warnock:From NPR, I'm Emily Kwong.

2:34Raphael Warnock:It's Consider This from NPR. To better understand the legacy of Jesse Jackson and the movement he leaves behind, we called Senator Raphael Warnock. I spoke with Senator Warnock about how Jackson's message still resonates. When was the first time you heard him speak?

2:50Jesse Jackson:Oh, wow. Yeah, I think, you know, just as a kid growing up, he actually came to Savannah, Georgia, and I heard him speak in the gymnasium in one of the local high schools where they had literally bussed hundreds of students from various schools so we could hear Reverend Jackson. His voice rang with such power and eloquence, and it is part of what has shaped my view of how you make your faith come alive in public service.

3:21Raphael Warnock:Reverend Jackson had a practice of standing with people at, quote, the point of challenge. He wanted to be on the front lines himself to put his body there. What impact do you think this has had?

3:33Jesse Jackson:Well, that's the hallmark of the civil rights movement.

3:35Raphael Warnock:Yeah.

3:36Jesse Jackson:It is literally about putting your body in the struggle. That's what Martin Luther King Jr. did. That's what Fannie Lou Hamer did when she stood up to the Democratic Party some 20 years before Jesse Jackson and said, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. That's what John Lewis and Hosea Williams did when they crossed that Edmund Pettus Bridge with brute force under the color of law on the other side of that bridge. But they kept walking. And more recently, in my estimation, Renee Good and Alex Preddy of Minneapolis lived out that same spirit, literally putting their bodies in the struggle.

4:19Jesse Jackson:They paid the ultimate sacrifice, but they too were trying to push the country towards its ideals.

4:25Raphael Warnock:You mentioned Dr. King. He decided not to run for president in 1968, though he did consider it. Why do you think Reverend Jackson's decision to run in 1984, to go from activism to politics, to be the person to make that transition, why was that such a watershed moment? Jesse Jackson is the bridge between civil rights activism of the 1960s and the kind of multiracial coalition politics that we have seen in the modern era that culminated in the presidency of Barack Obama and the work that I try to do every single day in the United States Senate.

5:07Jesse Jackson:And there's a whole generation of folks and a couple of generations who are serving not just black politicians, but women, Native Americans, Latinos, people come from immigrant communities, members of the LGBTQ community. He was the one in my lifetime to give a clear expression of what he called the Rainbow Coalition.

5:31Raphael Warnock:The idea of the Rainbow Coalition, all those groups you named, could it work today? You know, his campaigns helped register and energize millions of people to vote. The coalition of Barack Obama did the same. How does the idea of the Rainbow Coalition work now?

5:50Jesse Jackson:Here is part of why I know it works, is our adversaries certainly know it. Right now in Congress, they're trying to pass something called the Save America Act. It is a tragic misnomer. What they're trying to save is an old vision and version of America, a dark past that Jesse Jackson and others pushed us beyond.

6:14Raphael Warnock:And this is the act, of course, to require proof of citizenship in order to vote.

6:17Jesse Jackson:Yeah, look, and let me be really clear. People should have to demonstrate that they are who they say they are when they vote. And I want to be clear about that because there are those on the right who are trying to mischaracterize what we're saying. They are using this idea of voter ID as a false pretext for voter suppression. I will tell you as a member of the Senate, that legislation is dead on arrival. and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that they don't turn our democracy upside down. They're trying to narrow the electorate into something that is the opposite of a diverse and multiracial coalition.

6:56Raphael Warnock:What is at stake for American democracy in that way?

7:00Jesse Jackson:Well, the democracy itself. Here, let me be really clear. Voter fraud by voter ID is virtually non-existent. In the last decade, for example, in the state of Georgia, there have been less than five instances, less than five, of non-citizens voting when there have literally been millions, millions of votes cast. And so the question you have to ask yourself as a citizen is why would we disenfranchise literally hundreds of thousands of Americans in order to solve a problem that doesn't even exist?

7:44Raphael Warnock:Lastly, I want to ask, what parts of Reverend Jackson's mantle do you see yourself carrying? And in that vein, will you be running for president in two years?

7:54Jesse Jackson:No, I think his—look, he worked with Dr. King, but Jesse Jackson never tried to be Dr. King. And I'm not going to try to be Jesse Jackson. I'm Raphael Warnock, and I think we all do better when we stand in our own shoes while recognizing that we stand on the broad shoulders of moral giants like Jesse Jackson.

8:20Raphael Warnock:And will you consider a presidential run, hence, as time moves on?

8:25Jesse Jackson:I am very much focused on us winning the midterms in 2026 because we've got to put some guardrails on this dangerous Trump-advanced regime. And so I'm engaged and sharply focused on that fight. I'm up for re-election to the Senate in 2028.

8:47Raphael Warnock:Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, thank you so much for speaking with us.

8:51Jesse Jackson:Thank you very much.

8:54Raphael Warnock:This episode was produced by Kai McNamee. It was edited by John Ketchum and Jeanette Woods. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Emily Kwong.