America
has rituals for the dead. We lower flags. We
dim lights. We ask for
moments of silence. In rare cases - former
presidents, Rosa Parks -
we place bodies beneath the Capitol dome and
call it honor. So when
congressional leaders declined to extend
that honor to Rev. Jesse
Louis Jackson, they cited precedent.
Precedent
is tidy. Procedural. It is also how
exclusion dresses itself in
neutrality.
But
here is the truth: the Capitol Rotunda is
too small for Rev. Jesse
Jackson. Not physically. Symbolically.
The
Capitol dome was built with enslaved labor.
The wealth that shaped
Washington was extracted from Black bodies.
The building that houses
American democracy rests on people once
denied it. Rev. Jackson spent
a lifetime forcing this nation to confront
that contradiction. And he
did not simply protest injustice. He altered
the political terrain.
Through
the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, he pressured
corporations to diversify
hiring and boardrooms long before
“diversity” became a
culture-war slur. Through Operation PUSH, he
translated moral
authority into economic leverage. His
presidential campaigns in 1984
and 1988 did not merely seek votes; they
expanded the electorate and
reshaped the Democratic Party’s coalition,
language, and
imagination.
He
helped register millions of voters. He stood
with sanitation workers,
autoworkers, underpaid hotel workers, and
farmworkers. He negotiated
hostages’ release when official diplomacy
stalled. He could pivot
from children who needed eyeglasses to
geopolitics in a single breath
because he understood both were about power
- who has it, who hoards
it, and who must demand it.
I
knew him. I worked with him through
PUSH/EXCEL, the education arm of
Rainbow/PUSH. I watched him move from
boardroom to church basement to
international stage without ever shifting
his moral center. It was
all connected. It was all justice.
The
rotunda honors office. Rev. Jackson held
movement.
The
rules governing who lies in state or in
honor privilege elected
officials and generals. That is not neutral.
It reflects a nation
that confers legitimacy through title and
rank. But American
democracy has been most profoundly changed
by people who held neither
- people who organized, agitated, preached,
marched, and demanded.
I
am not sure I want my leader under that
dome.
The
Capitol is majestic. It is also a monument
to compromise with
slavery, to exclusion, to legislative delay
in the face of moral
urgency. It represents power consolidated
and negotiated. Rev.
Jackson represented power mobilized.
He
did not ask permission from marble. He
pressured it. He did not seek
validation from chambers that too often
stalled justice. He stood
outside them and forced them to respond.
Perhaps
lying in the rotunda would symbolize
acceptance. But Rev. Jackson’s
life was never about acceptance. It was
about disruption - holy,
strategic, relentless disruption. He was not
carved from stone; he
was forged in struggle.
The
deeper question is not why he is not in the
rotunda. It is whether
the rotunda has ever been worthy of him.
Flags
lower at the discretion of those in
authority. Movements rise without
their consent.
The
rotunda is a room. Rev. Jesse Jackson was a
movement.
History
will not measure him by who allowed him into
the room.
It
will measure the room by him.
