As a student leader in Greensboro in 1963, a participant in the the Selma campaign of 1965 and a lieutenant to the Rev. Martin Luther King when the civil rights leader was assassinated in Memphis in 1968, Jesse Jackson can claim an unrivaled analysis of the movement.
My slow hand and the poor quality of my recording prevents me from transcribing everything, but I wanted to include some of his remarks from the panel discussion at A&T on Friday. Some of these remarks are also captured by my colleague, Dioni Wise in her report for the News & Record.
Jackson: “I think it’s important to remember our history. The ’54 Supreme Court decision broke the legal backbone of Jim Crow. In August 1955, Emmett Till was lynched – a seminal moment. I once asked Ms. Parks, why didn’t she go to the back of the bus. She said she because of Emmett Till. Even though those moments happened, something magical happened in Greensboro. There were some movements leading up to that. And when the fire struck Greensboro, a wind blew and it captured the nation. I want people to appreciate just how humiliating segregation was…. We couldn’t rent a room at the Holiday Inn....
“Movements ebb and flow.... When I came to A&T, I was here that summer 50 years ago. When I came back that fall, the movement had died down....
“We were told the girls [Bennett College students] were getting beat up downtown. It was kind of reborn in 1963. The girls deserve a statue, too, because they sustained the movement until ’63....
“We were told we did not want to lose our accreditation. Faculty members could lose their jobs if they were an NAACP member....
“This is not a spectacular one-round, one-lick fight. This is a long-distance run.”
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