I was sharing a joke with Martin Luther King when he was shot.. I can’t forget sound of the bullet hitting him in neck
Reverend Jesse Jackson stares at the families buying popcorn in the foyer of a cinema in downtown Chicago. “There are white people, black, Asian,” the 76-year-old says. “When I grew up, we went round the back.
“We couldn’t see certain movies at all. Now, I can come in the front door.”
The astonishment of the lifelong civil rights campaigner and former politician is understandable.
We are here to watch Black Panther, a rare blockbuster that not only stars a black superhero, but also boasts a primarily black cast.
Later, as the credits roll, the man who has dedicated his life to fighting for black equality sits silently.
Then he whispers, elated: “When I was a kid, we were the natives – cowboys kill Indians. What a contrast.”
The timing of Rev Jackson’s viewing of the landmark film could not be more poignant.
Today marks 50 years since the assassination of his good friend and mentor, the civil rights activist Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
To Dr King, who battled for basic rights for black people – calling for an end to segregation and the right to vote – a film like this would have been a distant dream. The fact Rev Jackson and I are watching it now is reassurance that when he died, his dream did not die with him.
That means the world to Rev Jackson, who was with Dr King when he was murdered, aged 39, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was shot at 6.01pm on April 4, 1968, as he stood on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel. Rev Jackson – then a 26-year-old supporting Dr King during a wave of demonstrations to demand workers’ rights for black refuse collectors – was speaking to the Nobel Peace Prize winner when the bullet hit. They were making dinner plans.
Rev Jackson says: “Dr King joked, ‘You don’t even have a shirt and tie’. And I said, ‘All you need is an appetite, not a tie, to eat.’ And we laughed.
“And then – pow,” he recalls, closing his eyes for a long time, as if witnessing it all over again. “I saw it. It knocked him back against the wall. It severed his necktie.
“I ran up the narrow walkway and the bullet had knocked him against the wall and he lay, his foot across the bannister. There was blood everywhere. I touched him, I tried to comfort him, but things were happening so fast.
“It was a tremendous impact – he never had a chance, you know?” he says, softly. “I can never turn the sound of the bullet hitting him in his neck loose – I can never turn it loose.”
It knocked him back. There was so much blood. He never stood a chance
These days, Rev Jackson – also a Baptist minister, like Dr King – speaks slowly and quietly. The campaigner and once rousing orator – one of the first African Americans to run to be a presidential nominee, which he did twice – recently revealed he is suffering from Parkinson’s disease.
Now this tall, mighty man walks laboriously, conscious of falling. He also struggles with his grip because of the condition. But, on the anniversary of Dr King’s death, he plans to be in Memphis to commemorate the man he describes as “a father figure”. Rev Jackson says: “It