July 19, 2021 • 23 mins
Two American icons of social justice, the Reverend and Jackie have trailblazed across history and endured threats — all the while raising their children and keeping their family intact. Hear their lessons of courage through world events, infidelity, forgiveness and keeping the faith.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin. Hi, I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlowe Thomas, and
we're going on a series of double dates to find
out what makes a marriage last It was a bitter
(00:39):
cold November morning when we got to the airport. We
were heading out to Chicago, my old stomping grounds, to
visit Reverend Jesse Jackson and Jacqueline Jackson. Not only are
these two civil rights icons, his work with doctor Martin
Luther King, her lifelong activism, but they've been married throughout
it all, nearly sixty years. I was really looking forward
(01:02):
to it. Only problem, our flight from New York was
severely delayed and we were five hours late for our date.
It was awful. I really hate being late for anything.
But even though it was already evening by the time
we landed, they said, come on over anyway. I've known
them for decades and that's the kind of generous people
they are. Oh the children, well, they all still talk
(01:25):
to me. That's a good side. Jesse was diagnosed with
Parkinson's disease several years ago, but despite his condition, his
spirits were lively and Jackie, she's always full of life.
As we settled in, Jesse began to recall their early days.
I prison met Jackie. She was in college. She was
(01:45):
into modern dass, she's hid been to the library and
beautiful begun measure. Parents are restrict on her. Those are pluses.
She was in church all the time. Those are pluses.
So you beginning you saying you evaluate what values you
share the foundation with. Many mergers don't last long as
(02:09):
they have no mottle rootage. It told tree roossa's deep
as the tree is high, the little roots, that's another foundation.
The wind blows, they can't take it. That's why I see.
And what tree grows without roots, it cannot grow grow right.
(02:30):
I can't get over how lucky you were to find Jackie.
I mean, other women would have run out the door
because you were never home. I love you. I was lucky.
I told him because he was going and going and going,
and then he wouldn't inform me. I went to him
(02:52):
and I said, Reverend, you're supposed to make me happy.
And I was, I mean, because I really felt a
man is supposed to make you happy, that's his job.
We've always had a very kind of said my frank relationship.
(03:12):
And he looked at me and he said, I can't
do that. Looks like, what do you mean, can't make
me happy? He said, that's your responsibility to you. Whoa oh.
I hated him. I was depressed for months. It's like,
(03:33):
that's not why you get married. Partner secure. I'm going
to finish my story. But that's an interesting thing to
say that you thought he should make you happy. I
thought he should make me happy. But he helped me
to grow because I think after year, after hating him
for a full year, planning a divorce and running away,
(03:55):
um I figured it out. Um, there are things he
enjoys that I don't. He likes sports and early in
the marriage, which I wanted, I love theater. I need
to go to sleep and snore. And that was very
(04:16):
embarrassing for me, and it occurred to me that I
shouldn't humiliate him by imposing onto him the things that
I absolutely enjoy. And he made me miserable when we
did it together. And yet he was opening his thinking
(04:37):
that I could call my friends and we could go
out to the theater. You know, in many of these relationships,
if you don't like what I do, there is a
serious problem, but you can make it beyond liking what
I do in retrospect, have it overhead in common. It's
(05:01):
been married and building. We we demonstrated together. We resented
southern segregation, We resented the barbarism or racist institutions, visions
for our children. And at the end of the day,
it's about mutual to mutual security and fulfillment. If for
(05:27):
rest it is as exciting, it's as young, as fresh,
as sexy. But then there's responsibility comblems, and you had
to share your resources. I mean, one of the problems
of love is trust. And you trust somebody, you can't trust.
Love will asks very long. You can't trust somebody and
(05:47):
trust to make decisions that matter to you. Love matters soon.
But love has a mature and the air qualities of
life that add to love's maturity. Why didn't you tell
me these things? Zac was academically in kind, and so
(06:11):
was I either as incoming. She was trist based and
so was I. She marched for our freedom and our dignity,
and we did that together. We took risk together. But
that was said, I want you to leave seminary and
(06:32):
work with me full time. I was determined to ben
seminary jacket. You should you should go work with that
man when he was vacillating as to whether or not
to keep his scholarship at the Chicago Theological Seminary through
(06:53):
the Rockefeller Foundation. He had a scholarship to be here
in Illinois at the school, So our housing and everything
was in that package. Uh. And so when it came
time for Reverend to make the decision, he was trying
(07:15):
to weigh, what's to happen with my family if I
go fully with this guy full time? Uh, doctor King,
Doctor King, and and so, And what he's saying is
I I just thought, I'm not sure if I've ever
murdered someone else said they would have made that decision.
(07:38):
None of my friends, and that we're going safe for
the Urban League or something. It made more let's risk
and they had kind of stable administrative jobs. Dartine was
you might not come home, and you did not make
any money, and and and did you give up the scholarship?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course he accepted doctor
(08:00):
King's offer to join him. Jesse had been on this
journey for civil justice since that historic summer in college
in nineteen sixty. He'd been assigned a paper to write
and needed to borrow a book from the local library
in Greenville, South Carolina. It was a white library, and
when they refused to give him the book, he went
(08:21):
out back and cried. Eventually, he and his friends went
back to that same library and staged a sit in
in protest. We went to the library together, we were arrested.
That's I lost my film death in jails. Frankly, the
first time I went to jail, we were booked the afternoon.
(08:41):
But the fact that we've been going to be booked,
it was a book deal all over television was a breakthrough.
I got home. I was never get my father. Who
I got alarms my party from my father. That's your stepfather, father,
And so it's the janitor. And we go by the
(09:02):
bag on the Sunday afternoon. We would buff the floors
and into the hands. Anyhow, the door open and missed
the man who was in charge of the firm with
two of his friends. They were tall guys, kind of
drinking the red in the face. Yeah, then trying to
come here at seven. I was very aware of the
tone and who had that meant. He said, if you
(09:25):
look him, I'm gonna krick you. That's not the buve machine.
There's keys. The hope was what happened. He walt, miss sympathy,
you take the keys. I can't subject kicking me, and
you can't delay it back with you do the kick
in either we walked out the bank. My policy for
(09:48):
watching that acts of bravery. My father, Jesse's activism with
doctor King took him deeper and deeper into the civil
rights movement, so their work was often on the front
pages of the newspapers. Can you imagine how complicated it
must have been for Jesse and Jackie to be doing
all of that. It's kids to raise. I had three
(10:11):
children at that time, small children and one daughter sent
Teeter and two boys who want ten months apart. That's
pretty high schools all America. I never spoke with the
high school. Yeah, I want to be just a Jackson's daughter.
You see, that's attention because how they got you legal
(10:34):
shit this high profile. So and so my wife slept
in the gap. One time, Jesse and Junior said, I
come home from the room and its team to the
basketball game up at the academy. I didn't go. You
said that. I appreciate all you've done. But another night,
(10:56):
my mother comes to my game to see me play ball.
I felt bad about it because I'm having I'm always
ago shame between how the hell of this Jesse Jackson factor?
And so it was about assuming responsibility, whether jack understood
(11:16):
it and she transmitted it to them. In my work,
I never was inhibited from doing what I had to do.
My creativity was unlimited in times filling the road and
my work was risky. More Over, we had threats and
(11:43):
around the house beguns. We moved from the University of
Chicago right because we were working with doctor King, and
because of our work, we had access to many of
the people who were products of the Great Migration. That's
(12:04):
when so many African Americans, with the oppression in the
South cave to Illinois. Most of those people are deceased
now because that was a another age our elders and
because they knew that we had worked, we were working
with doctor King, and people kind of dove in and
(12:26):
embraced us and protected us. We lived on the third
floor of their apartment. And I remember who Spencer League now,
who is one of the largest funeral power services in
this area African American, and I remember his mother saying,
(12:47):
You'll be very safe here. You'll be safe. Jackie is
such a brave and determined woman. She wanted to be
down in the trenches with the people they were fighting for.
That's right. She didn't have what Jesse calls first lady ITAs.
I like this. I like to sit in the audience
(13:08):
because one you sit in the audience, you can hear
what they truly think. I go to the grocery store
and I interact with people in the parking lot. I
fight over my right to park in this space. And
you saw me here first. And then somebody will say,
(13:31):
aren't you Jesse Jackson's wife. I said, no, she's I
left her at home. No, I'm jack Well, I Jackson.
I still exist. You know, I can think for myself.
And I think women are very essential in holding a marriage,
and marriages are based on the attitude really of a woman.
(13:55):
If she wants, if she wants to keep it, she
will keep it. And if she's finished with it completely,
it's it's done. We'll have more. After a quick break,
(14:21):
we're back to our conversation with Reverend Jesse Jackson and
Jacqueline Jackson. Jackie never had first Lady IDAs, but that's
because she was already doing her own thing, traveling the world,
with diplomatic delegations and on fact finding missions. Jackie met
(14:42):
a Fat first the delegation in Lebanon. I met him
as Jack's husband, this international dimission of her life of vision.
She met Daniel take a first and Castro and are
(15:03):
Fat and middlease home with the field. Jack was in Lebanon,
and there were moment So I don't tell you. There
were moment I panicked and she can't make you. I
(15:23):
could hear myself. I couldn't imagine her being over there
and me be at home, and a lot you lay.
You both have led a purposeful life, and you both
have supported each other and inspired each other, it feels
most of the time. Now. That does not mean that
(15:45):
we don't fight. I have to fight with him to
keep him sharp, and I do that every morning we
have our exercise. I shouted him and I call him names.
What what? What? What's ther name? You go? I'm not
telling you. It's our little secret. Call you return. You'll
(16:12):
never forget it. So I just take that blue. Let
me just comment about how I see you. First of all,
you're both very good looking, always have been. And Jesse
really enters the room. I mean, he's a tree He's like,
you know, that's very tall, and I have a feeling
(16:35):
that you know, you can yell at him and he's
not gonna run out the door. He won't run out
the door. He takes bunches. Oh, he's good, un profound.
(16:55):
You're not jealous of him, You're never concerned. It seems
to me. I'm not jealous of him. No, you're not
worried about I'm not worried about it. Mister tallman. Yeah,
good looking. I was. We went out one night and
this lady was so stunned to see reverend, so she
(17:19):
ran past me and she just grabbed him by his
neck and she just swung and swung, swung, and I
kept moving further back. It's like, I'm not getting the
hell beat out of me. You deal with the woman
until and he comes saying, my wife Jackie, got in
(17:42):
my wife Jackie. I think we've been in that situation
a few times. Well, perhaps, but there was a more
serious intrusion into the Jackson's marriage. We were in Atlanta,
maybe yeah, and this woman walked up to me. My god,
she was gorgeous, and she was saying, and she had
her camera and she said, I want to take a picture,
(18:04):
and I said, oh you can. She said, and who
are you? I said, I'm his wife. She said, how
can you stay with him after he went out there
and had this baby? I said, this one is taken
and you cannot stay around him too long because you're
too good looking. Now you take your picture and leave.
(18:28):
What baby? What she talking? The California reverend has a child.
I have five children. Reverend has six. So was this
woman's child? No, but she wanted to address it, and
I wanted to let her know that I could. Well.
I asked a question, I don't know about this baby thing.
(18:48):
Would you mind telling me? I don't discuss it because
it's something in my past that I dealt with, and
I feel very comfortable. The young lady now is about
Ashley's about twenty, and she's ad spellman in school. And
(19:11):
I'm very comfortable and I'm very h Well, did you
get mad at him? Did you throw him out? Or? An?
Of course I did, because I uh, you know, as
a wife, you feel you're the sexiest, you're the best.
I'm trying to say before we go, is this well,
(19:34):
days of sunshine and the wind behind your back there
random days too. I don't think it's I don't like
to say that. I think there are some realities. I
think we are people. Nobody in this game, in this
world today it's perfect. We're imperfect beings. There are a
(19:59):
lot of flaws. And one of the things my attitude
in life is I don't like to discuss problems of anybody.
Tell how you got out of it, Tell me how
you feel today, Tell me how you move forward. I
call him reverence, so it reminds him of who he
should be. What interested me when you said that is
(20:23):
you kept that marriage together. Yes, you said, this is
not going to destroy my marriage. I promised in sickness
and in health, in good times and in bad, through
triumphs and sorrows. This marriage is a test of my
character and I and I learned this from my mother.
(20:49):
Every time I received my report card, the first thing
she looked at was my character. I don't look for
good people. I try to be it myself and be
the example. And that's a test of my character. Oh,
I so admire you. I do you know. I am
(21:12):
very proud to be a woman. If I have another
chance to come back, I want to be a woman.
I love and I love being an African American woman.
I want women to be the very best people. Women
(21:33):
are so necessary for men, and that's why women were
created last, so that all of the finest ingredients that
God may have missed when you were being composed. The
(21:53):
Lord thought about Lord stopped, rested, said when he looked
at men, I need a little help, and he's going
to need some help. And God I'd sat down and
thought about it and created me the second draft. I'm
(22:16):
Mumuranella was plaut Israel. Well, I would not I would
not have to do without my wife. I'm pretty good
he didn't take me first. I'd be lost. I couldn't survive.
That's the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Jacqueline Jackson. It's amazing
(22:40):
their hard work for justice and their long partnership had
been a part of American history. They certainly have. And
I've got to say, it was fun to be back
in Chicago again. Yep, just like the old days. Until
next time. I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlo Thomas. I
really thank you and it was a delightful interview. Double Day.
(23:03):
It's a production of Pushkin Industries. The show was created
by US and produced by Sarah Michael Bahari is Associate producer.
Musical adaptations of It Had to Be You by Stellwagon, Symfinette,
Marlo and I are executive producers, along with Mia Lobell
and Letal Molad from Pushkin Special thanks to Jacob Wiseberg,
(23:28):
Malcolm Gladwell, Heather Faine, John Snars, Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler,
Emily Rostak, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams, and Bruce Kluger. If
you like our show, please remember to share, rate, and review.
Thanks for listening.
Pushkin. Hi, I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlowe Thomas, and
we're going on a series of double dates to find
out what makes a marriage last It was a bitter
(00:39):
cold November morning when we got to the airport. We
were heading out to Chicago, my old stomping grounds, to
visit Reverend Jesse Jackson and Jacqueline Jackson. Not only are
these two civil rights icons, his work with doctor Martin
Luther King, her lifelong activism, but they've been married throughout
it all, nearly sixty years. I was really looking forward
(01:02):
to it. Only problem, our flight from New York was
severely delayed and we were five hours late for our date.
It was awful. I really hate being late for anything.
But even though it was already evening by the time
we landed, they said, come on over anyway. I've known
them for decades and that's the kind of generous people
they are. Oh the children, well, they all still talk
(01:25):
to me. That's a good side. Jesse was diagnosed with
Parkinson's disease several years ago, but despite his condition, his
spirits were lively and Jackie, she's always full of life.
As we settled in, Jesse began to recall their early days.
I prison met Jackie. She was in college. She was
(01:45):
into modern dass, she's hid been to the library and
beautiful begun measure. Parents are restrict on her. Those are pluses.
She was in church all the time. Those are pluses.
So you beginning you saying you evaluate what values you
share the foundation with. Many mergers don't last long as
(02:09):
they have no mottle rootage. It told tree roossa's deep
as the tree is high, the little roots, that's another foundation.
The wind blows, they can't take it. That's why I see.
And what tree grows without roots, it cannot grow grow right.
(02:30):
I can't get over how lucky you were to find Jackie.
I mean, other women would have run out the door
because you were never home. I love you. I was lucky.
I told him because he was going and going and going,
and then he wouldn't inform me. I went to him
(02:52):
and I said, Reverend, you're supposed to make me happy.
And I was, I mean, because I really felt a
man is supposed to make you happy, that's his job.
We've always had a very kind of said my frank relationship.
(03:12):
And he looked at me and he said, I can't
do that. Looks like, what do you mean, can't make
me happy? He said, that's your responsibility to you. Whoa oh.
I hated him. I was depressed for months. It's like,
(03:33):
that's not why you get married. Partner secure. I'm going
to finish my story. But that's an interesting thing to
say that you thought he should make you happy. I
thought he should make me happy. But he helped me
to grow because I think after year, after hating him
for a full year, planning a divorce and running away,
(03:55):
um I figured it out. Um, there are things he
enjoys that I don't. He likes sports and early in
the marriage, which I wanted, I love theater. I need
to go to sleep and snore. And that was very
(04:16):
embarrassing for me, and it occurred to me that I
shouldn't humiliate him by imposing onto him the things that
I absolutely enjoy. And he made me miserable when we
did it together. And yet he was opening his thinking
(04:37):
that I could call my friends and we could go
out to the theater. You know, in many of these relationships,
if you don't like what I do, there is a
serious problem, but you can make it beyond liking what
I do in retrospect, have it overhead in common. It's
(05:01):
been married and building. We we demonstrated together. We resented
southern segregation, We resented the barbarism or racist institutions, visions
for our children. And at the end of the day,
it's about mutual to mutual security and fulfillment. If for
(05:27):
rest it is as exciting, it's as young, as fresh,
as sexy. But then there's responsibility comblems, and you had
to share your resources. I mean, one of the problems
of love is trust. And you trust somebody, you can't trust.
Love will asks very long. You can't trust somebody and
(05:47):
trust to make decisions that matter to you. Love matters soon.
But love has a mature and the air qualities of
life that add to love's maturity. Why didn't you tell
me these things? Zac was academically in kind, and so
(06:11):
was I either as incoming. She was trist based and
so was I. She marched for our freedom and our dignity,
and we did that together. We took risk together. But
that was said, I want you to leave seminary and
(06:32):
work with me full time. I was determined to ben
seminary jacket. You should you should go work with that
man when he was vacillating as to whether or not
to keep his scholarship at the Chicago Theological Seminary through
(06:53):
the Rockefeller Foundation. He had a scholarship to be here
in Illinois at the school, So our housing and everything
was in that package. Uh. And so when it came
time for Reverend to make the decision, he was trying
(07:15):
to weigh, what's to happen with my family if I
go fully with this guy full time? Uh, doctor King,
Doctor King, and and so, And what he's saying is
I I just thought, I'm not sure if I've ever
murdered someone else said they would have made that decision.
(07:38):
None of my friends, and that we're going safe for
the Urban League or something. It made more let's risk
and they had kind of stable administrative jobs. Dartine was
you might not come home, and you did not make
any money, and and and did you give up the scholarship?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course he accepted doctor
(08:00):
King's offer to join him. Jesse had been on this
journey for civil justice since that historic summer in college
in nineteen sixty. He'd been assigned a paper to write
and needed to borrow a book from the local library
in Greenville, South Carolina. It was a white library, and
when they refused to give him the book, he went
(08:21):
out back and cried. Eventually, he and his friends went
back to that same library and staged a sit in
in protest. We went to the library together, we were arrested.
That's I lost my film death in jails. Frankly, the
first time I went to jail, we were booked the afternoon.
(08:41):
But the fact that we've been going to be booked,
it was a book deal all over television was a breakthrough.
I got home. I was never get my father. Who
I got alarms my party from my father. That's your stepfather, father,
And so it's the janitor. And we go by the
(09:02):
bag on the Sunday afternoon. We would buff the floors
and into the hands. Anyhow, the door open and missed
the man who was in charge of the firm with
two of his friends. They were tall guys, kind of
drinking the red in the face. Yeah, then trying to
come here at seven. I was very aware of the
tone and who had that meant. He said, if you
(09:25):
look him, I'm gonna krick you. That's not the buve machine.
There's keys. The hope was what happened. He walt, miss sympathy,
you take the keys. I can't subject kicking me, and
you can't delay it back with you do the kick
in either we walked out the bank. My policy for
(09:48):
watching that acts of bravery. My father, Jesse's activism with
doctor King took him deeper and deeper into the civil
rights movement, so their work was often on the front
pages of the newspapers. Can you imagine how complicated it
must have been for Jesse and Jackie to be doing
all of that. It's kids to raise. I had three
(10:11):
children at that time, small children and one daughter sent
Teeter and two boys who want ten months apart. That's
pretty high schools all America. I never spoke with the
high school. Yeah, I want to be just a Jackson's daughter.
You see, that's attention because how they got you legal
(10:34):
shit this high profile. So and so my wife slept
in the gap. One time, Jesse and Junior said, I
come home from the room and its team to the
basketball game up at the academy. I didn't go. You
said that. I appreciate all you've done. But another night,
(10:56):
my mother comes to my game to see me play ball.
I felt bad about it because I'm having I'm always
ago shame between how the hell of this Jesse Jackson factor?
And so it was about assuming responsibility, whether jack understood
(11:16):
it and she transmitted it to them. In my work,
I never was inhibited from doing what I had to do.
My creativity was unlimited in times filling the road and
my work was risky. More Over, we had threats and
(11:43):
around the house beguns. We moved from the University of
Chicago right because we were working with doctor King, and
because of our work, we had access to many of
the people who were products of the Great Migration. That's
(12:04):
when so many African Americans, with the oppression in the
South cave to Illinois. Most of those people are deceased
now because that was a another age our elders and
because they knew that we had worked, we were working
with doctor King, and people kind of dove in and
(12:26):
embraced us and protected us. We lived on the third
floor of their apartment. And I remember who Spencer League now,
who is one of the largest funeral power services in
this area African American, and I remember his mother saying,
(12:47):
You'll be very safe here. You'll be safe. Jackie is
such a brave and determined woman. She wanted to be
down in the trenches with the people they were fighting for.
That's right. She didn't have what Jesse calls first lady ITAs.
I like this. I like to sit in the audience
(13:08):
because one you sit in the audience, you can hear
what they truly think. I go to the grocery store
and I interact with people in the parking lot. I
fight over my right to park in this space. And
you saw me here first. And then somebody will say,
(13:31):
aren't you Jesse Jackson's wife. I said, no, she's I
left her at home. No, I'm jack Well, I Jackson.
I still exist. You know, I can think for myself.
And I think women are very essential in holding a marriage,
and marriages are based on the attitude really of a woman.
(13:55):
If she wants, if she wants to keep it, she
will keep it. And if she's finished with it completely,
it's it's done. We'll have more. After a quick break,
(14:21):
we're back to our conversation with Reverend Jesse Jackson and
Jacqueline Jackson. Jackie never had first Lady IDAs, but that's
because she was already doing her own thing, traveling the world,
with diplomatic delegations and on fact finding missions. Jackie met
(14:42):
a Fat first the delegation in Lebanon. I met him
as Jack's husband, this international dimission of her life of vision.
She met Daniel take a first and Castro and are
(15:03):
Fat and middlease home with the field. Jack was in Lebanon,
and there were moment So I don't tell you. There
were moment I panicked and she can't make you. I
(15:23):
could hear myself. I couldn't imagine her being over there
and me be at home, and a lot you lay.
You both have led a purposeful life, and you both
have supported each other and inspired each other, it feels
most of the time. Now. That does not mean that
(15:45):
we don't fight. I have to fight with him to
keep him sharp, and I do that every morning we
have our exercise. I shouted him and I call him names.
What what? What? What's ther name? You go? I'm not
telling you. It's our little secret. Call you return. You'll
(16:12):
never forget it. So I just take that blue. Let
me just comment about how I see you. First of all,
you're both very good looking, always have been. And Jesse
really enters the room. I mean, he's a tree He's like,
you know, that's very tall, and I have a feeling
(16:35):
that you know, you can yell at him and he's
not gonna run out the door. He won't run out
the door. He takes bunches. Oh, he's good, un profound.
(16:55):
You're not jealous of him, You're never concerned. It seems
to me. I'm not jealous of him. No, you're not
worried about I'm not worried about it. Mister tallman. Yeah,
good looking. I was. We went out one night and
this lady was so stunned to see reverend, so she
(17:19):
ran past me and she just grabbed him by his
neck and she just swung and swung, swung, and I
kept moving further back. It's like, I'm not getting the
hell beat out of me. You deal with the woman
until and he comes saying, my wife Jackie, got in
(17:42):
my wife Jackie. I think we've been in that situation
a few times. Well, perhaps, but there was a more
serious intrusion into the Jackson's marriage. We were in Atlanta,
maybe yeah, and this woman walked up to me. My god,
she was gorgeous, and she was saying, and she had
her camera and she said, I want to take a picture,
(18:04):
and I said, oh you can. She said, and who
are you? I said, I'm his wife. She said, how
can you stay with him after he went out there
and had this baby? I said, this one is taken
and you cannot stay around him too long because you're
too good looking. Now you take your picture and leave.
(18:28):
What baby? What she talking? The California reverend has a child.
I have five children. Reverend has six. So was this
woman's child? No, but she wanted to address it, and
I wanted to let her know that I could. Well.
I asked a question, I don't know about this baby thing.
(18:48):
Would you mind telling me? I don't discuss it because
it's something in my past that I dealt with, and
I feel very comfortable. The young lady now is about
Ashley's about twenty, and she's ad spellman in school. And
(19:11):
I'm very comfortable and I'm very h Well, did you
get mad at him? Did you throw him out? Or? An?
Of course I did, because I uh, you know, as
a wife, you feel you're the sexiest, you're the best.
I'm trying to say before we go, is this well,
(19:34):
days of sunshine and the wind behind your back there
random days too. I don't think it's I don't like
to say that. I think there are some realities. I
think we are people. Nobody in this game, in this
world today it's perfect. We're imperfect beings. There are a
(19:59):
lot of flaws. And one of the things my attitude
in life is I don't like to discuss problems of anybody.
Tell how you got out of it, Tell me how
you feel today, Tell me how you move forward. I
call him reverence, so it reminds him of who he
should be. What interested me when you said that is
(20:23):
you kept that marriage together. Yes, you said, this is
not going to destroy my marriage. I promised in sickness
and in health, in good times and in bad, through
triumphs and sorrows. This marriage is a test of my
character and I and I learned this from my mother.
(20:49):
Every time I received my report card, the first thing
she looked at was my character. I don't look for
good people. I try to be it myself and be
the example. And that's a test of my character. Oh,
I so admire you. I do you know. I am
(21:12):
very proud to be a woman. If I have another
chance to come back, I want to be a woman.
I love and I love being an African American woman.
I want women to be the very best people. Women
(21:33):
are so necessary for men, and that's why women were
created last, so that all of the finest ingredients that
God may have missed when you were being composed. The
(21:53):
Lord thought about Lord stopped, rested, said when he looked
at men, I need a little help, and he's going
to need some help. And God I'd sat down and
thought about it and created me the second draft. I'm
(22:16):
Mumuranella was plaut Israel. Well, I would not I would
not have to do without my wife. I'm pretty good
he didn't take me first. I'd be lost. I couldn't survive.
That's the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Jacqueline Jackson. It's amazing
(22:40):
their hard work for justice and their long partnership had
been a part of American history. They certainly have. And
I've got to say, it was fun to be back
in Chicago again. Yep, just like the old days. Until
next time. I'm Phil Donahue and I'm Marlo Thomas. I
really thank you and it was a delightful interview. Double Day.
(23:03):
It's a production of Pushkin Industries. The show was created
by US and produced by Sarah Michael Bahari is Associate producer.
Musical adaptations of It Had to Be You by Stellwagon, Symfinette,
Marlo and I are executive producers, along with Mia Lobell
and Letal Molad from Pushkin Special thanks to Jacob Wiseberg,
(23:28):
Malcolm Gladwell, Heather Faine, John Snars, Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler,
Emily Rostak, Jason Gambrel, Paul Williams, and Bruce Kluger. If
you like our show, please remember to share, rate, and review.
Thanks for listening.
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