We can honor my mentor and the late civil rights icon by becoming the America we\u2019ve never yet been<\/p>\n
Before 5am on Tuesday, Jesse Jackson Jr called to tell me his father and my friend, the Rev Jesse Louis Jackson<\/a>, had died<\/a> at 84 years old. I shared a prayer with the family and listened to Jesse Jr talk about how he had heard his father breathe his last breath in the middle of the night. When he called his mother to the room, he told me, she reached toward his father and said: \u201cA mighty lion has fallen.\u201d<\/p>\n In Africa\u2019s savannas, the lion is respected because he has a power that all the other animals recognize, even if they do not understand it. The responses<\/a> to Jackson\u2019s death have proven him to be a lion in this sense \u2013 remembered with respect by people from every walk of life, even those who did not understand him. Though Donald Trump has built a political career by opposing almost every policy Jackson worked for in public life, he recalled Jackson as a \u201cforce of nature\u201d. Trump recognized his power, even if he didn\u2019t understand it. Anyone who wants to help reconstruct the America that Jackson worked for should take time to understand the source of this mighty lion\u2019s strength.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We can honor my mentor and the late civil rights icon by becoming the America we\u2019ve never yet been Before 5am on Tuesday, Jesse Jackson Jr called to tell me his father and my friend, the Rev Jesse Louis Jackson, had died at 84 years old. I shared a prayer with the family and listened … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66740\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}