Transcript
Chris Cuomo (0:00)
Michael Eric Dyson, professor, pastor, reverend, historian, civil rights activist, and of course, social critic par excellence and friend of mine. Michael Eric Dyson, thank you for joining us, especially on short notice, so early in the morning. And I mourn the passing of the Reverend, who mattered to me personally and mattered to all of us from a civic and professional perspective. What do you want people to know about who he was and what he meant?
Michael Eric Dyson (0:34)
Well, thanks for having me, my dear friend. And he certainly was a man for his times, but a man for all ages, a man who, as you've already indicated, was not only beneficial to black America. In the aftermath of Dr. King's death in 1968, when he was in his late 20s, around 27 years old, and he emerged as the heir apparent to Reverend King and not without controversy, because surrounding him were Andy Young and Ralph Abernathy and the like. Jesse Jackson had only recently joined that circle after the Selma march where he met Dr. King for the first time, and then quickly ascended as head of Operation Breadbasket, which was their economic arm up north, attempting to integrate businesses so that black people could have a fair shake in terms of financial arrangements. So Jesse Jackson became the heir apparent and then emerged in the aftermath of that. But when he ran in 1984 and 88 for the presidency, he proved that he was part of what he borrowed from some of the Black Panthers in Chicago, part of the Rainbow Coalition, that it was for poor white working class people who were white as well. I was with him in London in the immediate aftermath of Nelson Mandela's release from prison. And we sat in the house of Oliver Tombo in a flat in London with Mrs. Mandela and Winnie Mandela and Nelson Mandela and Reverend Jackson right there. I saw him on that international stage, and I cannot tell you how many noted politicos from around the world, the Australian ambassador expressing profound admiration for Jesse Jackson. And then when we traveled the length and breadth of this country, going to San Antonio, off the radar, by the way, not the media following him, those who thought he was merely a media hound missed his profound commitment to ordinary people. And he would call me sometimes in the morning, far earlier than this, and he would say, this is your brother. And then he would run right into the issues he wanted to talk about. This man, you weren't going to get up earlier than him. You weren't going to go to bed later than him. He was committed in a most profound way to the betterment of not only his people, but this nation at large.
Chris Cuomo (3:17)
Big strong man, big voice. You know, we try to mitigate These qualities only when we don't have them. And the presentation mattered. The voice, the basso profundo, the rhyming, the cadence, the reach of history, the righteous indignation. And such an amazing battery life I got. I want to say, Michael, you'll know, you'll remember better than I, as always, but I really want to. It certainly was after 2020. I remember when I was going at it with Joe Manchin about the filibuster, which I was probably wrong about, by the way. We probably do need the Senate filibuster, because these people are crazy, and the simple majority will just take us in all kinds of wacky directions. But Jesse disagreed. My father disagreed, by the way. And Jesse, I think it was after 2020 he got arrested, I remember, for protesting to get rid of the filibuster so you could pass the. The last iteration of the Fair Voting Act.