It was November 2011, and I was deep in a Sunday-morning slumber when the phone rang. Groggy at first, I was jolted awake by something stronger than any cup of coffee north of Cuba. It was the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
I had first met Jackson the previous month after the publication of Olympian John Carlos’s memoir, The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World, which I co-wrote. Jackson revered Carlos and Tommie Smith for raising their fists on the medal podium at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Since then, he’d called several times to invite me on his radio show—but never early on a Sunday. This call was about something else.
“David,” he said, “I am due to give the eulogy for Joe Frazier, and I want to make sure I have the full story and cover all the bases.”
The surreality of the moment cannot be overstated. Jackson read to me the content of his eulogy, a masterful blend of Frazier’s sports brilliance and his impact outside the boxing ring, woven together with the story of his epic, three-fight rivalry with Muhammad Ali.
I asked if eulogizing greats ever gave him butterflies. “Not any longer,” he said. “But when I had to do it for Jackie Robinson, that’s when I felt the weight.”
I soon learned that Jackson had delivered final tributes for luminaries like the Brown Bomber (Joe Louis), and baseball rebel Curt Flood, among many others whose impact echoed beyond sports.
I shared with him that my very first column, written for Prince George’s Post, about the politics of sports, was inspired by Jackson’s efforts in 2003 to get Sylvester Croom hired as the head coach of the University of Alabama football team. Croom would have been the first Black head coach in any sport in the Dixie-tinged Southeastern Conference. Instead, the job went—disastrously—to Mike Shula, chosen mostly for his so-called pedigree as the son of NFL legend Don Shula.
Jackson saw it as a civil rights battle in the long tradition of fights for racial justice in Alabama and led a demonstration in Montgomery. What fascinated me most was how at ease Jackson seemed in this space between sports and politics—a place where, at the time, few dared to tread.
That comfort was rooted in his upbringing in the segregated South, where he excelled as a two-sport star in baseball and football.
He played the classic leadership positions—pitcher and quarterback—and found great success. As a pitcher, he received a contract offer, which he declined to attend college, from the Chicago White Sox at a time when teams still imposed strict quotas on the number of Black players allowed.
Even more remarkably, as a quarterback, he was offered a full scholarship to play at the University of Illinois when Black quarterbacks at predominantly white institutions were exceedingly rare. Jackson left Illinois in 1960 to attend North Carolina A&T State University, a historically Black institution. Though the exact reasons for his transfer remain unconfirmed, it’s likely Illinois tried to move him away from quarterback, a common experience for Black QBs back then, and he refused.
The mythos of the quarterback position stayed with Jackson throughout his life. He was a big man, built like a football player, and always carried himself like a field general, projecting an ineffable presence that drew people to him.
“Anyone who has ever been at an event where they meet, hear, or experience Reverend Jackson always invariably talks about his physical presence,” author Bijan Bayne tells me. “He’s bigger and more solid than people expect. And his sports history also translated into his bravado, his competitiveness, his confidence, and the way he moved in spaces among other athletes. Jackson was able to be comfortable around generations of athletes from the Jim Browns and Muhammad Alis all the way to the Michael Jordans and the Mike Tysons. It was genuine, and they felt that.”
Jackson’s legacy, of course, extends far beyond the athletic corner of the political world. But the way he carried himself in the sports world offers lessons progressives would do well to remember and carry forward.
Donald Trump has aggressively tried to plant his regime’s flag in the world of sports like no administration in memory. But sports are for everyone—including the transgender athletes Trump’s people have sought to harm. We should reflect on how the Reverend Jesse Jackson understood not only the value of struggle and play, but also the power that emerges when these worlds collide.