It was good to see Jesse Jackson alive at the Democratic Convention this week, although he is mightily weakened by Parkinson’s, a disease from which he has now been suffering for a number of years. But it was good to see him attend, and it was good to see the recognition he received from the convention and from the delegates.

I only met Jesse Jackson one time, and very fleetingly at that. But I always had great respect for him.

Everyone, though, at least for a time, did not. You may remember when Jackson (should I call him Jesse, like everyone else? I am just not a first name guy with people I don’t know.) called New York City “Hymietown”, and by implication at least, called Jews “Hymies”. This was during his campaign, now almost 40 years ago, for the Democratic nomination for president, and happened during a private conversation, which he may have thought was off the record, that he was having with, of all things, a Washington Post reporter. When the remark became public, he at first said he didn’t even remember saying it, but later apologized, both for the reference and for his initial denial. I think he was caught by surprise and the denial came out of his mouth before he had time to think, and then he was simply embarrassed. He denied consistently that his remark was meant to be, or that he was, antisemitic or anti-Israel. This was at a time when Black-Jewish relations had gone downhill, and when Black Muslim Louis Farrakhan was spouting serial anti-Jewish comments, and was one of Jackson’s most visible supporters for the nomination, bringing with him to the campaign an important and active segment of the Black population.

Until that day, Jackson was a favorite of liberal Jews, but that day his relationship to the Jewish community (which, among other things, was providing a significant amount of the funding for his campaign, I am sure) changed forever. I don’t think it ever recovered.

I always took Jesse Jackson at his word. I did not, and do not, think him an antisemite and, in fact, never even found the reference to be insulting. As I recall, it certainly had not been used in a statement that otherwise insulted or denigrated Jews. It was an off hand remark, something he probably thought was “cute”, and his apology to the Jewish community (both for the use of the phrase and for claiming that he didn’t recall even saying it) was, I thought, honest and sincere.

Looking back at it today, I think it was a very early (maybe the earliest) example of the “cancel culture” that we are still hounded by today. You say something, it gets interpreted in a negative way, and you are toast. And, as you know, you cannot untoast a piece of toast.

For years, I had a client, based on the West Coast, in Los Angeles, who managed low income, government assisted housing projects all over the country. At one point, I think they were the most active manager of this type of housing in the nation. They were not builders or developers; they generally bought existing properties, often very troubled properties, and tried to turn them around. They were usually fairly successful; sometimes they were not.

They were also very close to Jesse Jackson (and I am talking largely about the 1980s), spoke very highly of him, providing some funding for his campaign I am sure, and had a good personal relationship. My client was a large privately owned organization. Its two principal owners were both Jewish, as was the majority of its senior staff employees. I liked all of them quite a bit.

They purchased a property in Prince George’s County, Maryland, not too far off Rhode Island Avenue (with which you are now all somewhat familiar), called Glenarden Apartments. It was a large, sprawling, government assisted property – garden apartments, several buildings. And it had a terrible reputation for drugs and crime. I always thought its main problem was its location (nothing could be done about that) because it was conveniently located just off a Beltway exit, so that you could jump off the Beltway, enter the development, do your drug deal, and be back on the Beltway in minutes, your escape from possible enforcement action accomplished.

The project had a few hundred units, mainly large apartments, and like Brookland Manor, which I wrote about a week or so ago, housed large families, who had no money and often no regular male head of household, the hardest kind of development to keep in check.

My clients determined to rehabilitate Glenarden, and make it an example of what could be done. It should be noted that, although it looked for several years that they had succeeded, in fact, this was a failure and the development slipped back into its old habits. They eventually sold the property, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development eventually foreclosed on its mortgage and tore it down, selling the land for a different type of redevelopment. (Shortly after that, the president of the company suddenly and unexpectedly passed away, and the entire company became a shadow of its former self, but that’s another story.)

When Glenarden’s rehabilitation was completed, there was a celebration, a grand affair with balloons and food and games for the kids, and the star attraction was Jesse Jackson (that’s the one time I met him). He was at the height of his prominence, and the Hymietown conversation had not yet occurred. What was amazing and surprising to everyone was that he arrived on a helicopter, landing somewhere on the grass of the development. He got out of the helicopter, came over to the celebration, was introduced, was in a very jovial mood, and he gave a short speech.

I remember part of his speech. He talked about the problems of low income housing and how very lucky the residents of Glenarden were to have such a completely attractive, rehabilitated development. And he was right. But he went on to say something else. He went on to say that while the physical shape of a property might be important, it wasn’t the most important part of one’s home. He talked about the importance of keeping a family on the right track, with all of potential diversions and pitfalls of poor Blacks in the 1980s. It is possible, he said, to take a slum and make it a beautiful home. And it is equally possible to take a beautiful home and make it a slum. The message to the residents was clear: it is up to you to keep this property as nice as it is today.

And this turned out not to happen.

The Hymietown remark did not change the relationship of my clients to Jesse Jackson. They remained close, and they defended him whenever asked. I heard a number of Jesse Jackson stories from them. I knew that he never pulled away from his Jewish friends or supporters (at least those who did not pull away from him). And there was no repetition of anything like the Hymietown incident.

Jesse Jackson is just about one year older than I am. I have felt sorry for him from the day he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. I remember when he also got Covid, and it was touch and go as to whether or not he would recover. I wish him the best. I am glad I got to see him again this week, if only on television, and in spite of his serious disease.