{"id":1736,"date":"2016-02-22T16:08:55","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T21:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2016\/02\/22\/jesse-jackson-spends-a-few-days-at-furman\/"},"modified":"2022-11-07T13:55:40","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T18:55:40","slug":"jesse-jackson-spends-a-few-days-at-furman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/jesse-jackson-spends-a-few-days-at-furman\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesse Jackson spends a few days at Furman"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jesse<\/a>

Jesse Jackson donned a Furman cap after teaching in Diane Vecchio’s history class.<\/p><\/div>\n

At age 13, long before he became one of America\u2019s foremost leaders for civil rights alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., Greenville native Jesse Jackson dreamed of attending Furman University, earning a degree, and perhaps eventually teaching at the school.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t possible, however, since Furman didn\u2019t integrate its student population until 1965, a year after the passage of the Civil Rights Act.<\/p>\n

Now, more than 50 years after participating in the 1963 Freedom March on Washington by 200,000 blacks and whites to support equal human civil rights in America, Jackson recently appeared at Furman to speak before two separate gatherings.<\/p>\n

Throughout both talks, Jackson urged the attending students to remember the past, and to keep going forward and \u201cbuilding bridges\u201d for more positive social change\u2014beginning within themselves as individuals.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking in the rearview mirror has its place, but we can\u2019t linger there,\u201d he said on Oct. 30 to a crowd of about 800 in Furman\u2019s McAlister Auditorium. \u201cOur place is in looking at the joy in the windshield.\u201d<\/p>\n

Attending Furman students Simone Holloway and Laura Bardin, who are not the same color or race, said it was people like Jackson and King that had made it possible for them to be close friends in 2013 without the fear of stigmas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think part of the past that Rev. Jackson spoke about is being played out now,\u201d said Bardin, a second-year major in Spanish and Poverty Studies.<\/p>\n

Holloway, a senior political science major, added, \u201cIf we just talk about change but don\u2019t initiate it, we\u2019re just fooling ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is one reason why Furman history professor Dr. Diane Vecchio brought Jackson in to speak.<\/p>\n

His appearance was part of The Year of Altruism, a 2013 year-long celebration supported by more than 80 Upstate organizations to include Americans who have figured prominently in initiating civil rights changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe try to teach our students the relevance of history,\u201d Dr. Vecchio said. \u201cAnd for me, Rev. Jackson\u2026makes the Civil Rights movement come alive for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Especially considering that Jackson\u2019s initial desire to be a Paladin would always be connected to the birth of the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was 1954\u2014and we all had (Paladin basketball legend) Frank Selvy on the brain,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd Furman University was the university of my dreams. But I could not apply at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Furman wasn\u2019t the first big prize unjustly denied him, he said.<\/p>\n

When Jackson was asked by one of Vecchio\u2019s students in a private lecture on Oct. 31 what made him first want to pursue the cause of Civil Rights so strongly, he told them a story of his first day of school in the 1940s.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom my front porch, we could see the schoolhouse on Cleveland Street up the hill\u2014a nice red, brick schoolhouse with merry-go-rounds and swings and rows of tulips,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

There was another school further away on Sullivan Street, he added, whose yard didn\u2019t have any grass or swings or tulips or merry-go-rounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo in my own mind, going to school the next year meant going to the one that was closest (to my home) and most attractive.\u201d<\/p>\n

But when that day came, his excitement vanished when his mom, who walked him to school that first day, suddenly gave a jerk on his hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother turned my foot this way (away from the nice school),\u201d said Jackson, soon realizing that they were headed for Sullivan Street. \u201cAnd something hit me, or something hurt me, by that (early memory of segregation).\u201d<\/p>\n

Furman couldn\u2019t admit him 50 years ago.<\/p>\n

But at the end of his talk in Vecchio\u2019s class, when she and her 20 students presented him with applause and a Paladin ballcap, a smiling Jackson couldn\u2019t help but say, \u201cFinally<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before he became one of America\u2019s foremost Civil Rights leaders, Greenville native Jesse Jackson dreamed of attending Furman. That wasn\u2019t possible since Furman didn\u2019t integrate its student population until 1965, a year after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. But\u00a0more than 50 years after Jackson marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., and became an \u00a0international figure, he visited Furman to give a public lecture and speak to a history class about how far America has (and hasn’t) come in the meantime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":1737,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,42,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-history","category-sociology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41086,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions\/41086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}