When civil rights activist and two-time Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson died on Feb. 16, it made global front-page news.
In Rye, news of Jackson’s passing sparked memories of March 11, 1987: the day Jackson spoke for an hour to an auditorium full of students and teachers at Rye High School.
Jackson, 84, was known for his work with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his leadership of national boycotts at the helm of Operation PUSH, and his many campaigns for voting and economic justice.
But he came to Rye to talk about topics from “drug and alcohol abuse, teen-age pregnancy and world affairs, to racial equality and a personal and social responsibility to be the best one can be,” according to a March 12 article in the Mamaroneck Daily Times.
Marty Edelman, a former president of the Rye Board of Education and a long-time Jackson friend and advisor, arranged the speech. It took place following a Rye High School hockey game at which racial slurs had been yelled.
“He was met with awe,” recalled Edelman, who settled in Rye in 1972.
“The kids reacted that this guy is real — he was not a cartoon character,” said Edelman. “He answered questions and there was banter back and forth.”
On Facebook this week, Rye alumni reminisced about the speech. “That was a big day my freshman year,” Kendra Geoghegan Moran posted on the group called, “You Know You’re From Rye.” Said another: “I remember that so well!!!”
“It was a wonderful opportunity for us,” said Lyndsay Dowd. She told The Record: “I remember it being a secret that he was there and that I was surprised and delighted that he came to Rye.”
One poster said she was part of a student welcoming committee that had breakfast with Jackson, who brought his son along for the day.
The speech took place between Jackson’s two attempts to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988. Edelman said he believed Jackson felt that speaking at a school in such a predominantly white community was an opportunity to influence young people to, as King famously said, judge people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
“It was a moment for Rye and it was needed,” Edelman said.
Summing up his friend of more than 50 years, Edelman said, “Jesse, brilliantly articulate and creatively provocative, was one of the important leaders of the black community as equality slowly began to actualize in America.”
