O

He was … somebody.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a giant of the Civil Rights Movement, American politics and multiple humanitarian efforts died Tuesday at the age of 84.

Before I moved to Morristown 20 years ago, I was the editor of the Selma Times Journal in Selma, Alabama, home of Bloody Sunday, the starting point of the Selma to Montgomery March and a landmark of the Civil Rights Movement.

Over the course of my time in Selma, I met and interviewed Jackson a handful of times, sometimes in person, other times over the phone.

It was always an honor to speak with him. Personally, I found him engaged and respectful, generous with his time despite the fact that neither I nor my newspaper gathered the sort of national – or international – readership that Jackson typically reached.

In our interviews he was smart, kept to the talking points and conveyed the message he meant.

But it wasn’t until March of 2005 that I really understood the power that Jackson wielded, his ability to command a room and to lead.

Speaking from the pulpit of Brown Chapel AME Church, Jackson was the keynote speaker for a Jubilee weekend event. Jubilee is a multi-day commemorative event remembering Bloody Sunday – when peaceful marchers were attacked with by state troopers and deputized possemen with batons, tear gas and even troopers on horseback who encouraged their mounts to kick at the fleeing crowd.

It was a key moment in the Civil Rights Movement, helping to lead President Johnson into signing the Voting Rights Act later that year.

Brown Chapel AME had been the staging ground for the march and the place the marchers fled back to as “law enforcement” drove them back.

Throughout the movement in Selma, Brown Chapel AME served as a key staging point, refuge and meeting spot. I consider it’s pulpit to be one of the holiest places in America.

Before Jackson spoke, many other leaders of the movement – many of them ministers – took a turn delivering brief remarks. Though the purpose of the day was solemn, the old friends engaged in a bit of showmanship, cracking each other up as they tried to top each other in fiery oratory.

But then it was Jackson’s turn and as Jackson took his place to address the crowd, the room was buzzing with anticipation.

He started low and built his way into a crescendo. It was watching a master of his craft at work. Like being a few feet from your Ma playing the cello or a world class pianist perform. You couldn’t look away. You were rapt. In football terms, I was ready to run through a brick wall – but for human rights.

And then when he was finished, he introduced the Rainbow Coalition Choir whose performance brought the entire chapel to its feet. It was as close to God as I ever felt.

I think about my time in Selma, often. It made a significant impact on my life, my world view and a lot more.

I think about the fortitude of the people in the movement.

People like Jackson or the late Georgia U.S. Rep. John Lewis as well as others I met whose names aren’t remembered in the great history books that document the carving of the bedrock of American History.

Frankly, it’s something of a miracle that so many leaders of the movement, like Jackson, went on to do great things. For years, they lived their lives under the constant death threats, both to themselves and to their loved ones. They lived inside a crucible of pressure that few of us could ever understand.

I spoke with a woman in Selma named Lucille Hunter, a local whose husband was part of a group called the Courageous 8 who continued to hold protest organization meetings even after the racist Governor George Wallace banned them.

Her husband lost his job because he continued to stand up. He took odd jobs, delivered newspaper by bicycle and did all he could to support his family. And when he didn’t stand down, they started getting phone calls.

“We’re coming tonight,” they said. “We’re going to kill you. We’re going to kill your family and your children.”

And still they stood up.

And so did Jesse Jackson. I can’t imagine how many threats Jackson got in his years working under Martin Luther King Jr. I can’t imagine how much harder those letters hit after he was standing there in Memphis when the Civil Rights Leader was cut down by an assassin’s bullet. One second Jackson was in the parking lot, talking to King on the second floor balcony. The next, he was racing up the stairs trying to get to his fallen leader.

That Jackson continued a career as a leader and a politician after that is nothing short of a miracle. That he got as close to the presidency as any black man had ever gotten, knowing the threats he endured, is a testament to Jackson.

But even giants can fall. Jackson’s career wasn’t without missteps, without mistakes without hard earned lessons in practicing what he preaches.

There were other missteps, the kind that happen in the course of living more than 80 years on this Earth. No one is perfect, of course, but frequently perfection is expected of our giants, particularly by those who would bring them down.

I learned that in Selma, too. There were folks who would use any human failing, real or not, to try to tear down the accomplishments of those in the movement. As if personal failings could negate the larger work, as if the rights to freedom and equality were dependent on the moral uprightness of the people engaged in the fight.

Now, like so many others who engaged in the movement, who stood up for their rights and the rights of others, Jesse Jackson belongs to the universe. And I hope he’s up there, with his friends and mentors, gathered around and trying to one up the angels as they give their hosannas.