Jesse seeks to 'wake up' lost generation of Blacks

Jesse seeks to `wake up' lost generation of Blacks

With all roads leading soon to Kokomo, Miss., for an historic two-day, 29-mile march to protest the hanging death of 17-year-old Raynard Johnson, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. said he's determined to "wake up" a lost generation of Blacks who don't know the pains of their forefathers.

In preparation for Saturday and Sunday's march that'll begin from the tree where Johnson was hung, Jackson said his aim is to keep the spotlight on the "murder" of Johnson, an honor student who ranked in the upper five percentile of Mississippi.

Jackson said that light has been expanded to a number of similar deaths of Black men in that area, murders he says remain unsolved and virtually unreported.

The march, he said, will be symbolic of "hope and healing" and a conduit in making America hear the masses who are against the death penalty, racism, anti-worker, and injustices in America.

It will also give him the opportunity to "wake up" an entire generation he says does not know about the violence of going to Rainbow Beach in Chicago, not knowing the segregated barriers that divided Blacks and whites and the restrictive covenants in Hyde Park that banned renting or selling to Blacks, except in the old slave quarters in back of those mansions.

"We won those battles, so there is a generation that is at ease in so many ways taking for granted the battles of the past," Jackson said, vowing to awaken what he called the sleeping and uninformed generation.

With 45 members of the Black caucus in Mississippi, Jackson said they are all disconn???ted. He's met with them in an effort to unify their unprecedented numbers.

Jackson also referred to the execution of Gary Graham, known as Shaka Sankofa, and how Black elected officials and ministers were "disconnected" from the issue and how in Texas there are 1,250,000 Blacks are eligible to vote there. Jackson said of that number, 300,000 are not registered.

"In the last election, 950,000 were registered, of whom only 180,000 voted in the general and 50,000 in the primary. The whole range of protections come through the vote.

"It's amazing how even through religion, we have put politics in the margin, in our entertainment frenzy. We dance. We shout and somehow we put political emancipation in the margins, a kind of sidebar of our lives. That is what we must change," Jackson said.

With the FBI, the U.S. Justice Department, and U.S. Attorney Janet Reno investigating and Jackson posting a $10,000 reward for the killer of Johnson, Jackson, who has rejected the coroner's ruling of suicide that was made before Johnson's body was examined, said the march will end in Columbia, Miss., at a courthouse where there will be a call for justice and an end to racism.

"All of those who are from Mississippi should contact your relatives and be a part of this, because hate lynchings suggest very strongly that there's no basis for complacency."

Jackson made his remarks during the WVON's Cliff Kelley show guest hosted by Dr. George Smith.

Mississippi, Jackson said is one of the poorest states in the U.S. "It is number 50 in public education, 50th in teacher pay and number one in poverty, the poorest state with the richest soil in the country.

"There are a lot of alienated working-class white people who feel threatened and alienated by the system of using Blacks as scapegoats. You have a lot of that going on.

"But, in this march for hope, healing, moratorium on the death penalty, a march to organize workers, we intend to have a major action."

Jackson's trying to get more than 10,000 new memberships before his "Bridging the Gap: Moving From Margin to Mainstream," July 26-29 convention at the Hyatt Regency, 151 E. Wacker.

Cook County Comm. Bobbie Steele has promised to come up with 500 memberships through her church, Unity Baptist Church.

Jackson challenged everyone to call the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition at 773-373-3366.

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