Analysis of: Jesse Jackson tributes live: Bernice King and Al Sharpton join family in praising ‘transformative leader’
The Guardian | February 17, 2026
TL;DR
Civil rights icon Jesse Jackson's death prompts elite tributes framing his legacy as moral struggle, obscuring his Rainbow Coalition's class-based politics. The sanitization of radical economic justice movements into acceptable 'civil rights' narratives serves to neutralize their threat to capital.
Analytical Focus:Class Analysis Historical Context Contradictions
The death of Jesse Jackson has prompted an outpouring of tribute from Democratic Party leadership and civil rights figures, yet the coverage reveals a telling pattern: the systematic emphasis on moral and spiritual leadership while downplaying Jackson's explicitly class-conscious politics. Jackson's Rainbow Coalition represented one of the most significant attempts in postwar American history to build a multiracial, working-class political movement that connected racial justice to economic redistribution. The tributes collected here—from Hakeem Jeffries, Al Sharpton, Bernice King, and others—consistently frame Jackson through the lens of 'hope,' 'dreams,' and being a 'voice for the voiceless.' While these characterizations are not false, they perform an ideological function: translating Jackson's material demands for economic justice into the safer terrain of moral aspiration. Operation PUSH and the Rainbow Coalition were not merely about 'dignity' in the abstract; they organized boycotts against corporations, demanded hiring quotas, fought foreclosures, and explicitly named capitalism as a system that required fundamental transformation. The Guardian's own historical note about Jackson's 1969 invitation to address UK Black Power rallies alongside Tariq Ali hints at this radical dimension, but it remains peripheral to the main narrative. This commemorative moment illustrates how the ruling class manages the memory of movements that threatened its interests. By celebrating Jackson as a 'trailblazer' who opened doors for individual advancement, the coverage obscures his coalition-building that sought to unite Black workers, Latino farmworkers, poor whites, and organized labor against corporate power. The trajectory from Jackson's 1988 'Keep Hope Alive' speech to Obama's 'Hope and Change' represents not continuity but dilution—the metabolization of class politics into neoliberal multiculturalism that celebrates representation while abandoning redistribution.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Democratic Party establishment, Civil rights leadership class, Working-class movement participants (historical), Corporate media, Black professional-managerial class
Beneficiaries: Democratic Party leadership (gains legitimacy through association), Established civil rights organizations, Corporate interests (through neutralization of economic critique)
Harmed Parties: Working-class movements seeking economic justice, Those who would benefit from a revived class-based Rainbow Coalition politics, Historical understanding of radical traditions
The tribute process reveals a power dynamic where movement leaders are incorporated into establishment narratives upon death. Living radicals face marginalization; dead ones are canonized in ways that serve existing power. The Democratic Party—which repeatedly sidelined Jackson's candidacies—now claims his legacy, demonstrating how institutional power absorbs and neutralizes challengers.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Operation Breadbasket's corporate boycott campaigns for Black employment, Rainbow PUSH Coalition's foreclosure assistance programs, The material basis of multiracial coalition-building in shared economic precarity
Jackson's organizing explicitly targeted the relations of production: demanding that corporations hire Black workers, that banks halt foreclosures, that economic power be redistributed. The tributes focus on his 'negotiations' and 'bridge-building' but obscure that these were confrontations with capital over who controls economic resources and opportunities.
Resources at Stake: Control over historical narrative of civil rights movement, Political legitimacy derived from association with Jackson's legacy, The potential for class-based organizing in the present
Historical Context
Precedents: Sanitization of Martin Luther King Jr.'s anti-capitalist politics after his assassination, Incorporation of Frederick Douglass into liberal narratives, Malcolm X's posthumous transformation from revolutionary to icon
The United States has a consistent pattern of neutralizing radical movements through selective commemoration. King's 1966 two-thirds disapproval rating—mentioned in the article—contrasts sharply with his current status as a 'universal frame of reference for moral authority.' This transformation requires stripping away the material politics. Jackson's trajectory follows this template: his 1984 and 1988 campaigns terrified the Democratic establishment; now that establishment eulogizes him. This is not hypocrisy but hegemony—the active process of incorporating opposition into the existing order.
Contradictions
Primary: The contradiction between Jackson's legacy as a class-conscious organizer demanding economic redistribution and his commemoration as a moral figure who 'opened doors' for individual advancement
Secondary: The Democratic Party celebrating a figure whose politics it consistently rejected during his active years, Framing 'hope' as Jackson's message while material conditions for working people have deteriorated since his campaigns, The celebration of 'coalition-building' while actual working-class coalitions remain fractured
This contradiction will likely resolve through continued domestication of Jackson's legacy—his image will be deployed to legitimate Democratic Party politics that bear little resemblance to his actual demands. However, the material conditions that made Jackson's Rainbow Coalition resonate—declining wages, housing insecurity, corporate power—remain and intensify. The sanitized legacy may eventually collide with renewed class-based movements that recover his actual politics.
Global Interconnections
The commemorative treatment of Jesse Jackson reflects a global pattern in how liberal democracies manage the memory of movements that challenged capital. From Mandela's transformation into a symbol of reconciliation rather than economic justice, to the UK Labour Party's selective commemoration of Tony Benn, ruling classes consistently preserve the form of progressive movements while evacuating their content. This is not conspiracy but ideology functioning as common sense—editors and politicians genuinely believe they are honoring Jackson while unconsciously selecting which aspects of his legacy serve the existing order. The timing matters as well: Jackson's death comes during a period of intensifying inequality and the decay of the multiracial working-class politics he championed. The absence of any mention in these tributes of his actual policy demands—or their relevance to current conditions—demonstrates how commemoration can serve as a substitute for continuation. His legacy becomes a monument rather than a movement.
Conclusion
For those committed to class-conscious politics, Jackson's death presents both a loss and an opportunity. The loss is the passing of a figure who, whatever his contradictions, consistently named class as central to racial justice and attempted to build the coalitions necessary to challenge corporate power. The opportunity lies in recovering what the commemorations obscure: that Jackson's Rainbow Coalition offered a model for multiracial working-class organizing that remains urgently relevant. The task is not to mourn Jackson as a saint but to study his actual politics—the boycotts, the demands for economic redistribution, the coalition-building across racial lines—and to build anew what the tribute industry seeks to bury.
Suggested Reading
- Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B. Du Bois (1935) Du Bois's analysis of how Black workers' radical demands were neutralized after Reconstruction illuminates the pattern of commemoration-as-domestication visible in Jackson tributes.
- Prison Notebooks (Selections) by Antonio Gramsci (1935) Gramsci's concept of hegemony explains how ruling classes incorporate opposition through selective commemoration, absorbing Jackson's legacy into acceptable liberal narratives.
- Women, Race & Class by Angela Davis (1981) Davis's analysis of how race, class, and gender intersect in American movements provides context for understanding Jackson's Rainbow Coalition politics and their contemporary relevance.