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Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

How Jesse Jackson made room for white workers

Before Democrats fractured, Jackson united workers across race and region — and provided a model for today’s party

Published February 19, 2026 11:05AM (EST)

In May 2000, a few months before I left my native southeastern Kentucky to attend college in Washington, D.C., the Rev. Jesse Jackson came to a nearby town. The civil rights leader and two-time Democratic presidential candidate, who died on Tuesday at the age of 84, spoke at the commencement of Union College (now Union Commonwealth University), a small liberal arts college, and being a young politico, I had to go. What I heard and witnessed that day in a gymnasium in the middle of coal country has remained with me all these years later. 

Jackson’s visit, and the lead-up to it, sparked debate. Republicans who had been forged in the era of Ronald Reagan, with his dog-whistle depictions of mythical — and Black — “welfare queens” sponging off government assistance, were predictably dismissive, and they were joined in their criticism by some conservative Democrats. Jackson had spent years being pilloried by the right, especially by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, which was still in its infancy, and the attacks had taken their toll, leaving many suspicious of him and his motives. Along with his buddy, the Rev. Al Sharpton — the right had conflated the two and made them simpatico, when in fact they ran separate organizations and had different approaches to activism — Jackson liked to “stir things up,” some locals said, code for “Black folk should keep quiet and know their place.”

Others disagreed. My great-uncle, a traditional yellow-dog Democrat who was born during the Depression and named for Franklin Roosevelt, predicted approvingly that Jackson would “light a fire” under the audience. Other liberals I knew, both Black and white, counted themselves as members of the activist’s Rainbow Coalition and supported his intersectional work for the rights of Black Americans, people of........

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