The Poetic Symmetry of Jesse Jackson’s Life: Love, Rage, and Leadership

Photograph Source: John H. White – Public Domain

Rev. Jesse Jackson surprised me during a trip to his home state of South Carolina. He asked that I join him in the hospital room of his dying mother, Helen Burns Jackson. I had accompanied him in 2015 to write about his work advocating for then-governor Nikki Haley to accept Medicaid expansion funds from the Obama administration, and for her to remove the Confederate Flag from government property. When his mother became ill, he made his trips to Greenville more frequent...