'I am somebody' — RIP Reverend Jesse Jackson (1941-2026)
A civil rights titan and one of the greatest speakers of all time has died, aged 84. .
The Reverend Jesse Jackson commanded a stage like few speakers in history. He was also a man for a moment: in the building on the night Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated; alongside Nelson Mandela on the day he was released; envoy to Iraq to negotiate with Saddam Hussein for the release of human shield hostages on the eve of the First Gulf War; he ran for president, he was a shadow Senator, he stood in front of a crowd of a million people in Hyde Park to argue against the Second Iraq War in 2003.
He was a titan of 20th century politics, a speaker in the MLK mould who was captivating with his preacher’s tone and his lyrical and descriptive phrasing. The speech I’ve attached here is one of his most famous but also one of his simplest. It was a call and response introduction to the Wattstax Music Festival in 1972, convened as a celebration and a commemoration by African American artists on the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots.
It’s like a soul classic itself, and well worth a listen as well as a read. I’ll attach the transcript below.
The Reverend Al Sharpton, himself a civil rights champion with a mastery of the spoken phrase, paid tribute as follows: ‘Our nation lost one of its greatest moral voices. A man who carried history in his footsteps and hope in his voice.”
He was indeed somebody.
Jesse Jackson: ‘I Am Somebody’, Wattstax Music Festival - 1972
20 August 1972, Los Angeles Coliseum, California, USA
Wattstax was a benefit-concert put together by Stax Records to commemorate the community of Watts, Los Angeles after its 1965 Riots
This is a beautiful day… It is a new day… it is a day of black awareness, it is a day of black people taking care of black people’s business… We are together, we are unified… and all in accord… Because when we are together we got power… and we can make decisions…
Today on this program you will hear gospel, and rhythm and blues, and jazz. All those are just labels. We know that music is music… All of our people have got a soul, our experience determines the texture, the tastes and the sounds of our soul. We may say that we are may be in the slum but the slum is not in us. We may be in the prison, but the prison is not in us. In what we have shifted from, burn baby burn to learn baby learn. We have shifted from having a seizure about what the man got, to seizing what we need. We have shifted from bed bugs and dog ticks to community control and politics.
That is why we’ve gathered today, to celebrate our homecoming and our own sense of somebodyness. That is why I challenge you now to stand together, raise your first together, and engage in our famous black litany. Do it with courage and determination:
I am ...[I am!]
Somebody... [somebody!]
I am ... [I am!]
Somebody ... [somebody!]
I may be poor ... [I may be poor!]
But I am ... [but I am!]
Somebody ... [somebody!]
I may be on welfare ... [I may be on welfare!]
But I am ... [but I am!]
Somebody ... [somebody!]
I may be unskilled ... [I may be unskilled!]
But I am ... [But I am!]
Somebody ... [somebody!]
I am ... [I am!]
Black ... [black!]
Beautiful ... [beautiful!]
Proud ... [proud!]
And must be respected ... [and must be respected]!
I must be protected ... [I must be protected!]
I am God’s child ... [I am God’s child]
When we stand together ... what time is that? ... [Nation time!]
When we stand together ... what time is that? ... [Nation time!]
What time is that ... [nation time!]
What time is that ... [nation time!]
Mr Kim Weston ... the black national anthem.
I Am - Somebody was written in the 1950s by Reverend William Holmes Borders, Sr., senior pastor at Wheat Street Baptist Church and civil rights activist in Atlanta, Georgia.
A Sesame Street version
I will post another Jesse Jackson speech tomorrow, his concession speech at the 1984 DNC Convention, one of the great speeches.