This story was originally reported by Erin Haines by The 19thand republished via Newsgroup rewiring‘s partnership with the 19th News Network.
Leah Daughtry was six years old when she first met Rev. Jesse Jackson during a boycott of a local supermarket that refused to hire black workers.
Her father was a prominent civil rights activist and church leader who had long been active in politics, and Jackson became a fixture in the Daughtry family home and church in Brooklyn. Later, when Daughtry was a student at Dartmouth College, Jackson introduced her to presidential politics when he recruited her to mobilize young voters in New Hampshire.
“It was incredibly powerful and incredibly tough, but what I learned from that experience was that he trusted me,” Daughtry recalls. “He saw something in me and in all of us that said, ‘I believe you can do it and I’m going to give you the responsibility to help me win.’”
Part of Jackson’s civil rights legacy, who died on February 17 at the age of 84is the expansion of Black women’s political power at the voting booth and within Democratic Party politics.
Jackson, who worked with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and led key organizations in the pursuit of civil rights, including the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, also ran for two ultimately unsuccessful presidential bids in 1984 and 1988. Through these efforts, Jackson helped reshape American political power by building a diverse coalition focused on those long excluded from national leadership—including black voters, women, youth, and the working class. It was a coalition that would become the foundation of modern Democratic Party politics.
As Jackson’s civil rights work evolved from the movement to political power, his campaigns registered millions of new voters – what became known as the Rainbow Coalition – and diverse voter participation would become part of his lifelong work. His campaigns helped normalize Black women’s leadership beyond the ballot box as organizers, decision makers and strategists. In the years since his presidential campaigns, black women have shaped party leadership and helped shape the direction of American politics.
“He always said, ‘Our patch isn’t big enough,’” Daughtry said of Jackson. “In any community, there aren’t enough of us to make electoral change. We need to build a quilt with bigger pieces, and all of us together mean we can make the change we all need. We are much stronger when we are together, and there are more of us – even if they may not be from where you come from, or look the way you look. There is common ground, if you look for it.”
Women were key to the Rainbow Coalition, said Melanie Campbell, who was attending Clark College (now Clark-Atlanta University) when she volunteered for Jackson’s campaign and registered voters in Georgia.
“He had women around him politically. … He made us understand that we had the power of the vote,” said Campbell, now president of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. “I didn’t know I would end up working in the civil rights field. Being around him and other civil rights leaders, men and women… shaped me into who I am today.”
Donna Brazile was also one of the young black women who got her start in politics by working with Jackson. In 1984, at age 23, she left a job at Coretta Scott King to work for Jackson, who tapped into her Louisiana roots to focus on Southern voters.
She remembered him as someone who saw people as individuals, who never made her feel inferior or that she had to fight to get into rooms.
“He always involved us,” said Brazile, who in 2000 would become the first black woman to lead a major party presidential campaign. “He gave me my wings. He understood that I could organize and gave me every opportunity. He rooted me in politics. He let me know that I could run campaigns. … Almost every skill I learned, I learned to stand on his shoulders.”
Chicago native Minyon Moore was a college student working at Encyclopedia Britannica when she was hired to work at Operation PUSH, the civil rights organization Jackson co-founded in her hometown. In 1988, Moore was asked to serve as deputy field director for Jackson’s presidential campaign.
“Shirley Chisholm said, ‘If you don’t have a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.’ Rev. Jackson said, ‘You have a seat at the table — and it’s a hard seat,'” a permanent seat, Moore said. He emphasized the importance of preparation and the value of serving other people and taking on any task, no matter how big or small, she added.
Moore’s career in politics includes becoming the first Black female director of political affairs in the White House, under President Bill Clinton, and later leading the Democratic National Committee and the party convention.
Black female elected officials are also part of Jackson’s legacy. The Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters co-chaired Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 campaigns. She was elected to Congress in 1990 and is serving her 18th term in California’s 43rd District.
In a tribute to Jackson, former Vice President Kamala Harris wrote, “He let us know that our voices mattered. He let us know that we were someone. And he broadened the path for generations to follow in his footsteps and lead.”
In 1984, Jackson became only the second Black American to run for president as a major political party candidate, following the groundbreaking career of Shirley Chisholm in 1972. Although neither was elected, voters made important gains in political representation thanks to Jackson’s candidacy. He urged the Democratic Party to change its rules around rewarding delegates and end winner-take-all primaries, creating more fair, proportional representation.
In 2024, Jackson appeared at the Democratic National Convention, where Harris accepted the party’s nomination for president, on opening night to thunderous applause from the arena, a testament to his contribution to American politics. It was a full-circle moment for Moore, who said Jackson has always guided her through the decades.
“He trusted that we were going to work for the people,” Moore said. “He always wanted me to know exactly what our white counterparts knew. He felt like the only way to do that was to give us the experience to do it. There was never a place where we weren’t welcome.”
By inviting black women into national politics, Jackson ensured that they would help shape the country’s future. His approach holds lessons for the Black women organizers and political strategists who continue his work, said Glynda Carr, president of Higher Heights for America.
“His two campaigns were built on this idea of coalition, to elevate the voices of the working poor, the working class and the middle class, and insist that Black voters and our communities were at the center of a national conversation,” said Carr, whose political action committee mobilizes Black women voters to elect Black women to office. “If we’re actually going to rebuild America, what does real coalition building look like?”
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