Remembering Rev. Jesse Jackson: How He Changed Lives with ‘I Am Somebody'”
More than forty years ago, in a crowded corridor in Nassau, Bahamas, I watched Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. do something small that revealed something immense: he stopped.
My mother, Frances L. Murphy II — then publisher of the AFRO-American Newspaper — and I were attending a conference where he was the keynote speaker. The main ballroom was already humming with anticipation. He was making his way toward the session, surrounded by aides, press, admirers and well-wishers. Cameras flashed. Hands reached. Voices called his name.
I had no idea my mother knew him personally. Suddenly she said, “Walk faster,” gently pulling me forward. Then she called out, “Jesse!”
With all those people pressing in around him — and the demands of the moment pulling him toward the stage—he turned. He smiled. He greeted her warmly. And in that brief but generous pause, I was introduced to him.
He did not rush us. He did not look past us. For those few seconds, we were the only people who mattered.
Only later did I understand what I had witnessed.
“I Am Somebody”
That moment was Rev. Jackson’s ministry in miniature. It revealed what his famous declaration — “I am somebody” — truly meant. It was never only about the speaker. It was about the listener. The overlooked. The ordinary citizen. The people that history too often renders invisible. In the early 1970s, Rev. Jackson began carrying that affirmation into the national consciousness, transforming a simple declaration of dignity into a movement language of self-worth for Black children, poor communities and all who had been told — directly or indirectly — that they were less than.
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