Seeking Votes and Clout

COVER STORIES

Jesse Jackson spearheads a new black drive for political power

Run, Jesse, run! Run, Jesse, run.The chants roll toward him, rumbling like a pent-up storm, rising to the rafters and the stained-glass portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. With the practiced rhythms of preacher and pitchman, he launches his sermon on power. "There's a freedom train acoming," he intones. "But you got to be registered to ride." Amen! "Get on board! Get on board!" There is fire in his eyes, a pin in his starched collar, a finger in the air. "We can move from the slave ship to the championship! From the guttermost to the uppermost! From the outhouse to the courthouse! From the statehouse to the White House!" The well-dressed congregation of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles erupts with the same chant that has resounded in the Delta country of Mississippi, in Chicago, in Atlanta. It is a rising cry that the self-styled country preacher seems less and less likely to resist. Run, Jesse, run! Run, Jesse, run!

Jesse Louis Jackson, 41, the illegitimate son of a South Carolina high school student has for 15 years sought to don the mantle of his mentor Martin Luther King Jr. By turns he can be fascinating and frightening, inspiring and irritating, charismatic and controversial. And so too is the crusade he has been considering. On one level it would be the ultimate embodiment of the American political ideal, an affirmation that every child of the nation, yes even a black one, can some day seek the presidency. Yet on another level, it would be as far removed from conventional politics as Jackson is removed from conventional politicians.

The rally in Los Angeles a week ago marked Jackson's latest tentative step toward becoming a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. His "exploratory committee," led by Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary, Ind., officially became the Jesse Jackson Presidential Advisory Committee. Its purpose is to conduct a poll and sound out black leaders to see if there is sufficient support for such a race. But most of the leaders who are on the committee seem already to have made up their minds. Hatcher reminds the audience in the adobe-colored church that Americans like to tell their children that if they work hard enough they can grow up to be President. "I have one proposition to leave you with," he says. "Either we ought to stop lying to our children or we ought to start believing it and doing the things necessary to make it come true." Bishop H.H. Brookins takes the podium to ridicule the large number of black officeholders who are wary, even downright disapproving, of a Jackson candidacy. "We did not have to ask black elected officials what they thought we should do, because after all we elected them!" he preaches. "If not now, when? If not Jesse, who?"

For the past few months, Jackson has been crisscrossing the country conducting voter-registration revival meetings to bring blacks into the political process. He will cry: "We need 10,000 blacks running for office from Virginia around to Texas—county clerks, supervisors, sheriffs, judges, legislators, Governors—Just run! Run! Run!" His audience will interrupt: Run, Jesse, run! Run, Jesse, run! "When you run, the masses register and