Unmasking Jesse Jackson
From a reader: The fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King has become a national bonanza of white guilt and black triumphalism. Uniformly, without exception, the “mainstream” media praise King and his legacy in messianic language, simplifying the complex historical and social issues involved to the point that they are presented in basically religious terms. The fear and self censorship that fuels such obsequious behavior is http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3833, who exploit it.
The cynical manipulation of the King legacy began literally minutes after his death. Andrew Young told PBS about the death in language that bordered on blasphemy: “After they removed his body, Ralph Abernathy got a jar and started scraping up the blood and said, and crying it was Martin’s precious blood. This blood was shed for us.” As researcher Ken Timmerman shows, even more grotesque exploitation was in store.
Geoff Metcalf interviews ‘Shakedown’ author Ken Timmerman
Q: I know you are getting a lot of questions regarding the epiphany, to some people, that http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3206 were not exactly the way Jesse tells the story.
A: It is a pretty extraordinary story. The liberal media has been complicit with Jackson for all of these years since 1968. When they think of Jesse Jackson, most people think of the story he has told and the spin that he has put on it.
Q: If you tell the lie long enough and consistently enough, it eventually becomes accepted as fact.
A: That’s right. And that is the way it has become. The first time Ron Daniels was on with me, he tried to claim that Jesse Jackson had in fact cradled Martin Luther King in his arms, and that is the lie. Q: Was Rev. Abernathy lying?
A: No, Abernathy told the truth, and it is because of Abernathy that we know the truth.
Q: And what is the truth?
A: Jesse Jackson was not up on the balcony. They even tried to show the picture of Jesse Jackson up on the balcony with Martin Luther King. That picture was taken the day before. It was a publicity shot.
Q: As are most of the things that Jesse gets involved in.
A: That’s right. He goes there for the cameras, and you are going to hear that in this story. He was not up on the balcony with Martin Luther King. He was down in the parking lot talking to a bunch of musicians – Ben Branch and others. When the shots rang out, he fled and hid behind the swimming pool area and reappeared 20-30 minutes later when the television cameras arrived on the scene. That’s when Jesse Jackson told other Southern Christian Leadership Conference staffers, “Don’t you talk to the press whatever you do.”
Q: That’s my job!
A: Yes, that’s my job. Nobody had given him that job. He took that job. Call it “entrepreneurial instinct” if you wish, but on the spot he realized that he had an opportunity to spin the events to create his own persona and create a possibility for him to become a leader in the black movement. He had no prospects at that point.
Q: We know there were pictures all over the place of Jesse with blood on his shirt. Given that Jesse was in the parking lot when Dr. King was shot, where did that come from?
A: The next morning, he flew to Chicago and went on the NBC “Today Show.” In the meantime, he had hired a public relations agent. So here is a guy who is in such grief from Martin Luther King’s assassination that he comes back to Chicago and has the presence of mind to have himself taken from interview to interview in a chauffeur-driven car with a P.R. agent. The P.R. agent takes him to the NBC “Today” show, he appears in a shirt that he claims is smeared with Dr. Martin Luther King’s blood and he says on national television, “He died in my arms” – an absolute, patent lie.
Q: What I don’t understand is why Abernathy and those who were there didn’t jump up and scream, “Slow down! That ain’t the way it went down.”
A: That’s a legitimate question, and I don’t have a clear answer for it. All I can tell you, from what I understood, is Abernathy was too much of a gentleman and did not want to confront …
Q: He paid a price for that.
A: He did. But he did not want to confront Jackson openly. He felt it would divide the leadership of the civil-rights movement at that time. He let Jesse do his thing up in Chicago, figuring, I suppose, that it wouldn’t harm what Abernathy was doing down in Atlanta.
Q: And Abernathy assumed, obviously incorrectly, that he was going to get a piece of the action anyway.
A: Abernathy did assume the mantle of Dr. Martin Luther King’s leadership. He became the new leader of the SCLC, but he didn’t have the charisma and he didn’t have the following that King did.
Q: I want you to explain to our readers how Jesse stuck it to Abernathy with that Black Expo scam.
A: Actually, that’s a really important story that I tell in “Shakedown.” People in Chicago who were around in the late ’60s and early ’70s know the story. I tell you, I sure didn’t.
Q: It was news to me, too, and this wasn’t a mere or simple bureaucratic oversight. There were some very specific Machiavellian legal things that had to be structured and implemented. Please explain the Black Expo scandal, and be sure to mention Angela Parker.
A: Angela Parker was a black reporter from the Chicago Tribune who discovered the rot in the state of Denmark, if you wish. Angela Parker did the research and discovered that Jesse Jackson was fiddling with the money from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Operation Breadbasket. This was after Martin Luther King was shot.
Q: And he was creating corporate shields to isolate things, too.
A: That’s correct, and he did that with his half brother Noah Robinson, of whom I will say more. Angela Parker went down to Atlanta and presented all the evidence to Rev. Abernathy. Abernathy is floored – he just can’t believe it. He comes up to Chicago to the Marriott Hotel at the airport and hauls Jesse Jackson – invokes him – in front of the entire board of the SCLC. Jackson responds with his typical street-hustler reaction. He brings his gang member friends, and they all come with these big picket signs to meet Rev. Ralph David Abernathy.
Q: With the “http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2838"?
A: Yes. And the picket signs read, “Don’t get messy with Jesse.” It was as if he was going to go meet a white lynch gang. He’s going to meet Abernathy, OK. Abernathy presents the evidence in front of him, eventually, and tells Jackson, basically, “You have been embezzling funds from the organization.”
Q: But he didn’t even fire him?
A: No. He suspended him for 60 days. Jackson slams the door and rages out, and within a week, he says, “If they’re going to suspend me, I’m going to leave.” Then he sets up his own organization called Operation PUSH. In the meantime – and this is extremely important because it shows what Jackson does when he is challenged, especially by people within the black community – he singles out at the next weekly meeting of his organization, in front of hundreds of people (some people say thousands of people), Angela Parker, who comes as a reporter to cover the event. He points his finger at her and says, “This woman has been destroying black leadership.” And, of course, she is black. She gets hooted and howled out of the meeting. When she goes back home, she has to have bodyguards because people are picketing her house. She has to change houses. Jackson really unleashed a movement of hate against this woman. And what she did was her job as a reporter.
Q: It is what Jackson does against any opponent. The first thing he does is call them a racist, but he couldn’t exactly call Angela a racist.
A: No. So he said this woman is trying to destroy black leadership. He sicked the dogs on her – there is really no other way of saying it. This is the kind of story I try to tell in “Shakedown.” I think it is so important to know that side of Jesse Jackson the liberal media doesn’t want you to hear.
Q: The other thing that is important is the almost symbiotic relationship he had with criminals – the street gangs.
A: They were criminals. In one of the interviews he did with me for the book, he claimed he was just trying to rehabilitate the street gang members.
Q: Wait a minute, in that Black Expo flap, his deal with the gangs was, “Don’t hassle us and I’ll give you a piece of the action.”
A: That’s right, and in fact, they came and shook him down. Jesse thought he was in bed with the street gangs and that they were willing to go along with him. They wanted a third cut! The funniest story was told to me by one of Jesse Jackson’s friends, Hermene Hartman. She said the treasurer, Cirilo McSween – this wonderful man from Panama, who had been a track star but is short in stature – had been stripped naked and taken out into the alleyway as the gangs were trying to get the money out of Jackson. Taking Cirilo McSween out in the alleyway and stripping him buck-naked is probably what made Jackson turn over the money.
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