Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hi, I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlowe Thomas, and
Speaker 1: we're going on a series of double dates to find
Speaker 1: out what makes a marriage last It was a bitter
Speaker 1: cold November morning when we got to the airport. We
Speaker 1: were heading out to Chicago, my old stomping grounds, to
Speaker 1: visit Reverend Jesse Jackson and Jacqueline Jackson. Not only are
Speaker 1: these two civil rights icons, his work with doctor Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King, her lifelong activism, but they've been married throughout
Speaker 1: it all, nearly sixty years. I was really looking forward
Speaker 1: to it. Only problem, our flight from New York was
Speaker 1: severely delayed and we were five hours late for our date.
Speaker 1: It was awful. I really hate being late for anything.
Speaker 1: But even though it was already evening by the time
Speaker 1: we landed, they said, come on over anyway. I've known
Speaker 1: them for decades and that's the kind of generous people
Speaker 1: they are. Oh the children, well, they all still talk
Speaker 1: to me. That's a good side. Jesse was diagnosed with
Speaker 1: Parkinson's disease several years ago, but despite his condition, his
Speaker 1: spirits were lively and Jackie, she's always full of life.
Speaker 1: As we settled in, Jesse began to recall their early days.
Speaker 1: I prison met Jackie. She was in college. She was
Speaker 1: into modern dass, she's hid been to the library and
Speaker 1: beautiful begun measure. Parents are restrict on her. Those are pluses.
Speaker 1: She was in church all the time. Those are pluses.
Speaker 1: So you beginning you saying you evaluate what values you
Speaker 1: share the foundation with. Many mergers don't last long as
Speaker 1: they have no mottle rootage. It told tree roossa's deep
Speaker 1: as the tree is high, the little roots, that's another foundation.
Speaker 1: The wind blows, they can't take it. That's why I see.
Speaker 1: And what tree grows without roots, it cannot grow grow right.
Speaker 1: I can't get over how lucky you were to find Jackie.
Speaker 1: I mean, other women would have run out the door
Speaker 1: because you were never home. I love you. I was lucky.
Speaker 1: I told him because he was going and going and going,
Speaker 1: and then he wouldn't inform me. I went to him
Speaker 1: and I said, Reverend, you're supposed to make me happy.
Speaker 1: And I was, I mean, because I really felt a
Speaker 1: man is supposed to make you happy, that's his job.
Speaker 1: We've always had a very kind of said my frank relationship.
Speaker 1: And he looked at me and he said, I can't
Speaker 1: do that. Looks like, what do you mean, can't make
Speaker 1: me happy? He said, that's your responsibility to you. Whoa oh.
Speaker 1: I hated him. I was depressed for months. It's like,
Speaker 1: that's not why you get married. Partner secure. I'm going
Speaker 1: to finish my story. But that's an interesting thing to
Speaker 1: say that you thought he should make you happy. I
Speaker 1: thought he should make me happy. But he helped me
Speaker 1: to grow because I think after year, after hating him
Speaker 1: for a full year, planning a divorce and running away,
Speaker 1: um I figured it out. Um, there are things he
Speaker 1: enjoys that I don't. He likes sports and early in
Speaker 1: the marriage, which I wanted, I love theater. I need
Speaker 1: to go to sleep and snore. And that was very
Speaker 1: embarrassing for me, and it occurred to me that I
Speaker 1: shouldn't humiliate him by imposing onto him the things that
Speaker 1: I absolutely enjoy. And he made me miserable when we
Speaker 1: did it together. And yet he was opening his thinking
Speaker 1: that I could call my friends and we could go
Speaker 1: out to the theater. You know, in many of these relationships,
Speaker 1: if you don't like what I do, there is a
Speaker 1: serious problem, but you can make it beyond liking what
Speaker 1: I do in retrospect, have it overhead in common. It's
Speaker 1: been married and building. We we demonstrated together. We resented
Speaker 1: southern segregation, We resented the barbarism or racist institutions, visions
Speaker 1: for our children. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's about mutual to mutual security and fulfillment. If for
Speaker 1: rest it is as exciting, it's as young, as fresh,
Speaker 1: as sexy. But then there's responsibility comblems, and you had
Speaker 1: to share your resources. I mean, one of the problems
Speaker 1: of love is trust. And you trust somebody, you can't trust.
Speaker 1: Love will asks very long. You can't trust somebody and
Speaker 1: trust to make decisions that matter to you. Love matters soon.
Speaker 1: But love has a mature and the air qualities of
Speaker 1: life that add to love's maturity. Why didn't you tell
Speaker 1: me these things? Zac was academically in kind, and so
Speaker 1: was I either as incoming. She was trist based and
Speaker 1: so was I. She marched for our freedom and our dignity,
Speaker 1: and we did that together. We took risk together. But
Speaker 1: that was said, I want you to leave seminary and
Speaker 1: work with me full time. I was determined to ben
Speaker 1: seminary jacket. You should you should go work with that
Speaker 1: man when he was vacillating as to whether or not
Speaker 1: to keep his scholarship at the Chicago Theological Seminary through
Speaker 1: the Rockefeller Foundation. He had a scholarship to be here
Speaker 1: in Illinois at the school, So our housing and everything
Speaker 1: was in that package. Uh. And so when it came
Speaker 1: time for Reverend to make the decision, he was trying
Speaker 1: to weigh, what's to happen with my family if I
Speaker 1: go fully with this guy full time? Uh, doctor King,
Speaker 1: Doctor King, and and so, And what he's saying is
Speaker 1: I I just thought, I'm not sure if I've ever
Speaker 1: murdered someone else said they would have made that decision.
Speaker 1: None of my friends, and that we're going safe for
Speaker 1: the Urban League or something. It made more let's risk
Speaker 1: and they had kind of stable administrative jobs. Dartine was
Speaker 1: you might not come home, and you did not make
Speaker 1: any money, and and and did you give up the scholarship?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course he accepted doctor
Speaker 1: King's offer to join him. Jesse had been on this
Speaker 1: journey for civil justice since that historic summer in college
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty. He'd been assigned a paper to write
Speaker 1: and needed to borrow a book from the local library
Speaker 1: in Greenville, South Carolina. It was a white library, and
Speaker 1: when they refused to give him the book, he went
Speaker 1: out back and cried. Eventually, he and his friends went
Speaker 1: back to that same library and staged a sit in
Speaker 1: in protest. We went to the library together, we were arrested.
Speaker 1: That's I lost my film death in jails. Frankly, the
Speaker 1: first time I went to jail, we were booked the afternoon.
Speaker 1: But the fact that we've been going to be booked,
Speaker 1: it was a book deal all over television was a breakthrough.
Speaker 1: I got home. I was never get my father. Who
Speaker 1: I got alarms my party from my father. That's your stepfather, father,
Speaker 1: And so it's the janitor. And we go by the
Speaker 1: bag on the Sunday afternoon. We would buff the floors
Speaker 1: and into the hands. Anyhow, the door open and missed
Speaker 1: the man who was in charge of the firm with
Speaker 1: two of his friends. They were tall guys, kind of
Speaker 1: drinking the red in the face. Yeah, then trying to
Speaker 1: come here at seven. I was very aware of the
Speaker 1: tone and who had that meant. He said, if you
Speaker 1: look him, I'm gonna krick you. That's not the buve machine.
Speaker 1: There's keys. The hope was what happened. He walt, miss sympathy,
Speaker 1: you take the keys. I can't subject kicking me, and
Speaker 1: you can't delay it back with you do the kick
Speaker 1: in either we walked out the bank. My policy for
Speaker 1: watching that acts of bravery. My father, Jesse's activism with
Speaker 1: doctor King took him deeper and deeper into the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement, so their work was often on the front
Speaker 1: pages of the newspapers. Can you imagine how complicated it
Speaker 1: must have been for Jesse and Jackie to be doing
Speaker 1: all of that. It's kids to raise. I had three
Speaker 1: children at that time, small children and one daughter sent
Speaker 1: Teeter and two boys who want ten months apart. That's
Speaker 1: pretty high schools all America. I never spoke with the
Speaker 1: high school. Yeah, I want to be just a Jackson's daughter.
Speaker 1: You see, that's attention because how they got you legal
Speaker 1: shit this high profile. So and so my wife slept
Speaker 1: in the gap. One time, Jesse and Junior said, I
Speaker 1: come home from the room and its team to the
Speaker 1: basketball game up at the academy. I didn't go. You
Speaker 1: said that. I appreciate all you've done. But another night,
Speaker 1: my mother comes to my game to see me play ball.
Speaker 1: I felt bad about it because I'm having I'm always
Speaker 1: ago shame between how the hell of this Jesse Jackson factor?
Speaker 1: And so it was about assuming responsibility, whether jack understood
Speaker 1: it and she transmitted it to them. In my work,
Speaker 1: I never was inhibited from doing what I had to do.
Speaker 1: My creativity was unlimited in times filling the road and
Speaker 1: my work was risky. More Over, we had threats and
Speaker 1: around the house beguns. We moved from the University of
Speaker 1: Chicago right because we were working with doctor King, and
Speaker 1: because of our work, we had access to many of
Speaker 1: the people who were products of the Great Migration. That's
Speaker 1: when so many African Americans, with the oppression in the
Speaker 1: South cave to Illinois. Most of those people are deceased
Speaker 1: now because that was a another age our elders and
Speaker 1: because they knew that we had worked, we were working
Speaker 1: with doctor King, and people kind of dove in and
Speaker 1: embraced us and protected us. We lived on the third
Speaker 1: floor of their apartment. And I remember who Spencer League now,
Speaker 1: who is one of the largest funeral power services in
Speaker 1: this area African American, and I remember his mother saying,
Speaker 1: You'll be very safe here. You'll be safe. Jackie is
Speaker 1: such a brave and determined woman. She wanted to be
Speaker 1: down in the trenches with the people they were fighting for.
Speaker 1: That's right. She didn't have what Jesse calls first lady ITAs.
Speaker 1: I like this. I like to sit in the audience
Speaker 1: because one you sit in the audience, you can hear
Speaker 1: what they truly think. I go to the grocery store
Speaker 1: and I interact with people in the parking lot. I
Speaker 1: fight over my right to park in this space. And
Speaker 1: you saw me here first. And then somebody will say,
Speaker 1: aren't you Jesse Jackson's wife. I said, no, she's I
Speaker 1: left her at home. No, I'm jack Well, I Jackson.
Speaker 1: I still exist. You know, I can think for myself.
Speaker 1: And I think women are very essential in holding a marriage,
Speaker 1: and marriages are based on the attitude really of a woman.
Speaker 1: If she wants, if she wants to keep it, she
Speaker 1: will keep it. And if she's finished with it completely,
Speaker 1: it's it's done. We'll have more. After a quick break,
Speaker 1: we're back to our conversation with Reverend Jesse Jackson and
Speaker 1: Jacqueline Jackson. Jackie never had first Lady IDAs, but that's
Speaker 1: because she was already doing her own thing, traveling the world,
Speaker 1: with diplomatic delegations and on fact finding missions. Jackie met
Speaker 1: a Fat first the delegation in Lebanon. I met him
Speaker 1: as Jack's husband, this international dimission of her life of vision.
Speaker 1: She met Daniel take a first and Castro and are
Speaker 1: Fat and middlease home with the field. Jack was in Lebanon,
Speaker 1: and there were moment So I don't tell you. There
Speaker 1: were moment I panicked and she can't make you. I
Speaker 1: could hear myself. I couldn't imagine her being over there
Speaker 1: and me be at home, and a lot you lay.
Speaker 1: You both have led a purposeful life, and you both
Speaker 1: have supported each other and inspired each other, it feels
Speaker 1: most of the time. Now. That does not mean that
Speaker 1: we don't fight. I have to fight with him to
Speaker 1: keep him sharp, and I do that every morning we
Speaker 1: have our exercise. I shouted him and I call him names.
Speaker 1: What what? What? What's ther name? You go? I'm not
Speaker 1: telling you. It's our little secret. Call you return. You'll
Speaker 1: never forget it. So I just take that blue. Let
Speaker 1: me just comment about how I see you. First of all,
Speaker 1: you're both very good looking, always have been. And Jesse
Speaker 1: really enters the room. I mean, he's a tree He's like,
Speaker 1: you know, that's very tall, and I have a feeling
Speaker 1: that you know, you can yell at him and he's
Speaker 1: not gonna run out the door. He won't run out
Speaker 1: the door. He takes bunches. Oh, he's good, un profound.
Speaker 1: You're not jealous of him, You're never concerned. It seems
Speaker 1: to me. I'm not jealous of him. No, you're not
Speaker 1: worried about I'm not worried about it. Mister tallman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good looking. I was. We went out one night and
Speaker 1: this lady was so stunned to see reverend, so she
Speaker 1: ran past me and she just grabbed him by his
Speaker 1: neck and she just swung and swung, swung, and I
Speaker 1: kept moving further back. It's like, I'm not getting the
Speaker 1: hell beat out of me. You deal with the woman
Speaker 1: until and he comes saying, my wife Jackie, got in
Speaker 1: my wife Jackie. I think we've been in that situation
Speaker 1: a few times. Well, perhaps, but there was a more
Speaker 1: serious intrusion into the Jackson's marriage. We were in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: maybe yeah, and this woman walked up to me. My god,
Speaker 1: she was gorgeous, and she was saying, and she had
Speaker 1: her camera and she said, I want to take a picture,
Speaker 1: and I said, oh you can. She said, and who
Speaker 1: are you? I said, I'm his wife. She said, how
Speaker 1: can you stay with him after he went out there
Speaker 1: and had this baby? I said, this one is taken
Speaker 1: and you cannot stay around him too long because you're
Speaker 1: too good looking. Now you take your picture and leave.
Speaker 1: What baby? What she talking? The California reverend has a child.
Speaker 1: I have five children. Reverend has six. So was this
Speaker 1: woman's child? No, but she wanted to address it, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to let her know that I could. Well.
Speaker 1: I asked a question, I don't know about this baby thing.
Speaker 1: Would you mind telling me? I don't discuss it because
Speaker 1: it's something in my past that I dealt with, and
Speaker 1: I feel very comfortable. The young lady now is about
Speaker 1: Ashley's about twenty, and she's ad spellman in school. And
Speaker 1: I'm very comfortable and I'm very h Well, did you
Speaker 1: get mad at him? Did you throw him out? Or? An?
Speaker 1: Of course I did, because I uh, you know, as
Speaker 1: a wife, you feel you're the sexiest, you're the best.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say before we go, is this well,
Speaker 1: days of sunshine and the wind behind your back there
Speaker 1: random days too. I don't think it's I don't like
Speaker 1: to say that. I think there are some realities. I
Speaker 1: think we are people. Nobody in this game, in this
Speaker 1: world today it's perfect. We're imperfect beings. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of flaws. And one of the things my attitude
Speaker 1: in life is I don't like to discuss problems of anybody.
Speaker 1: Tell how you got out of it, Tell me how
Speaker 1: you feel today, Tell me how you move forward. I
Speaker 1: call him reverence, so it reminds him of who he
Speaker 1: should be. What interested me when you said that is
Speaker 1: you kept that marriage together. Yes, you said, this is
Speaker 1: not going to destroy my marriage. I promised in sickness
Speaker 1: and in health, in good times and in bad, through
Speaker 1: triumphs and sorrows. This marriage is a test of my
Speaker 1: character and I and I learned this from my mother.
Speaker 1: Every time I received my report card, the first thing
Speaker 1: she looked at was my character. I don't look for
Speaker 1: good people. I try to be it myself and be
Speaker 1: the example. And that's a test of my character. Oh,
Speaker 1: I so admire you. I do you know. I am
Speaker 1: very proud to be a woman. If I have another
Speaker 1: chance to come back, I want to be a woman.
Speaker 1: I love and I love being an African American woman.
Speaker 1: I want women to be the very best people. Women
Speaker 1: are so necessary for men, and that's why women were
Speaker 1: created last, so that all of the finest ingredients that
Speaker 1: God may have missed when you were being composed. The
Speaker 1: Lord thought about Lord stopped, rested, said when he looked
Speaker 1: at men, I need a little help, and he's going
Speaker 1: to need some help. And God I'd sat down and
Speaker 1: thought about it and created me the second draft. I'm
Speaker 1: Mumuranella was plaut Israel. Well, I would not I would
Speaker 1: not have to do without my wife. I'm pretty good
Speaker 1: he didn't take me first. I'd be lost. I couldn't survive.
Speaker 1: That's the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Jacqueline Jackson. It's amazing
Speaker 1: their hard work for justice and their long partnership had
Speaker 1: been a part of American history. They certainly have. And
Speaker 1: I've got to say, it was fun to be back
Speaker 1: in Chicago again. Yep, just like the old days. Until
Speaker 1: next time. I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlo Thomas. I
Speaker 1: really thank you and it was a delightful interview. Double Day.
Speaker 1: It's a production of Pushkin Industries. The show was created
Speaker 1: by US and produced by Sarah Michael Bahari is Associate producer.
Speaker 1: Musical adaptations of It Had to Be You by Stellwagon, Symfinette,
Speaker 1: Marlo and I are executive producers, along with Mia Lobell
Speaker 1: and Letal Molad from Pushkin Special thanks to Jacob Wiseberg,
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell, Heather Faine, John Snars, Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: Emily Rostak, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams, and Bruce Kluger. If
Speaker 1: you like our show, please remember to share, rate, and review.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.