Jesse Jackson Jr., the son of the recently deceased activist and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, has slammed former Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton over how they remembered Reverend Jackson in their speeches at his memorial.
During Friday’s service at Chicago’s House of Hope, Obama warned about the state of the nation, calling each day a “new assault on our democratic institutions.”
“Each day, we’re told by those in high office to fear each other and to turn on each other, and that some Americans count more than others, and that some don’t even count at all,” the former president said.
“Everywhere we see greed and bigotry, being celebrated and bullying and mockery masquerading as strength. It’s hard to hope in those moments.”
Biden also claimed the Trump administration doesn’t share “any of the values that we have.”
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, defeated by Trump during the 2024 election, bragged she “predicted a lot about what’s happening right now” during her remarks.
“I’m not into saying I told you so, but we did see it coming,” Harris said.
“But what I did not predict is that we would not have Jesse Jackson with us right now to help us get through this.”
Clinton, who kept his eulogy mostly free of politics, remembered Jackson warmly as a good friend.
However, Jesse Jackson Jr. the son of the late Civil Rights leader, seemed to disapprove of how the three presidents remembered Jackson.
“ I listened for several hours to three United States presidents who do not know Jesse Jackson,” the grieving son said during a private memorial service at Rainbow Push Coalition headquarters in Chicago.
“He maintained a tense relationship with the political order, not because the presidents were white or black, but the demands of our message, the demands of speaking for the least of these – those who are disinherited, the damned, the dispossessed, the disrespected – demanded not Democratic or Republican solutions, but demanded a consistent, prophetic voice that at no point in time ever sold us out as people.
“And it speaks volumes about who the Rev. Jesse Jackson was.”
Jackson died at 84 last month at his Chicago home.