The Rev. Jesse Jackson stood mesmerized on the baseline, intently watching the Chicago Bulls warm up before an NBA playoff game against the Indiana Pacers.
He was comfortable and at ease in an atmosphere that clearly offered a familiar environment for the civil rights leader.
Jackson, who died on Tuesday at age 84, was an athlete from a young age, and throughout his life he immersed himself in the world of sports — as a player, as a fan and as an advocate. He accepted a football scholarship at Illinois, then transferred to historically Black North Carolina A&T after a year. He was a quarterback on the Aggies team that won a conference title in 1964 and was inducted into A&T's athletic Hall of Fame twenty years later.
“What is not a well-known fact is that Rev. Jackson, first of all, he was a football player,” said CK Hoffler, Jackson’s attorney for 38 years. “He himself, as a former athlete, understood the plight of athletes.”
While Jackson was in his element at that Bulls-Pacers game back in 2011, he couldn't just blend in. Standing near professional basketball players, he had a 6-foot-3 presence that loomed largest of all. He even cast a shadow over Bulls star Derrick Rose — the league MVP that season and fellow Chicago icon whom he made the trip to Indianapolis to support.
His sports experiences fueled a deep passion for ensuring that athletes like Rose were given equal opportunities and treatment, regardless of race, gender, sport or native country.
“He’s always been an advocate of greater inclusion, whether it was fair pay and other things for athletes throughout the country and throughout the world,” Hoffler said. “Athletes from overseas, ensuring that they got a fair shake as well. That was part of what (he) felt was fair. That was part of his social justice.”
Jackson’s advocacy knew no boundaries. At times that meant taking bold, public stands. At others, that meant enduring tough negotiations behind closed doors.
“The Harlem Globetrotters, they had their own cartoon," Hoffler said. "They did a lot of community building, and they were just iconic in and of themselves. But they had no insurance. They had no benefits. And Rev. Jackson, upon hearing that, took it upon himself to negotiate their benefits.”
Len Elmore, who played 10 seasons in the NBA and is a senior lecturer at Columbia University, said there is a strong connective tissue between Jackson’s sports roots and how it threaded through his advocacy for equality and social justice in all areas of society.
Over the years, Elmore witnessed firsthand how Jackson didn’t shy away from pushing for change at all levels, including in Major League Baseball, the NFL and NBA.
“He certainly had a vision and in trying to achieve that vision he was very forward and aggressive in stating what the world should be like,” said Elmore, who lectures on athlete activism and social justice in sports. “He also was very critical of the timing of some of the actions that didn’t come fast enough or they weren’t capable enough.
"His understanding of the world and what it should be, what it should look like was amazing. And his leadership in trying to get there was something that inspired a lot of us.”
Elmore, who had a sports agency in the early to mid-1990s, said one of his most prized possessions is an award he received from the sports arm of Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH organization for its efforts to increase Black sports agent representation.
Jackson also championed minority coaches. Elmore remembers just how much Jackson pushed Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney to adopt what became the NFL’s Rooney Rule in 2003. That rule, aimed at addressing the low number of minority head coaches, originally required every team with a head coaching vacancy to interview at least one or more diverse candidates before making a hire.
Jackson, Elmore said, “wanted folks to have a piece of the pie. He wanted that pie to have diverse overtones.”
But Jackson also didn’t shy away from being critical of the Rooney Rule's lack of effectiveness. After Brian Flores sued the NFL for racial discrimination, Jackson called for tweaks in a 2022 USA Today editorial in which he called the rule a “toothless tiger.”
“You recognize change and the type of change that he envisioned. It wasn’t just a dream, it was active,” Elmore said. “Whether it was either influencing to some extent Harry Edwards in the '60s, the Rooney Rule, the Nike boycott (demanding more Black employees) in 1990 — he wanted athletes to recognize their platform and the legacy they possess. Not just in the field, but in the boardroom. ... That is what Jesse Jackson envisioned and what he was about.”
Hoffler said Jackson loved all sports and identified with the athletes who fought for equality. Though he was a football player, he had a special love for basketball. In recent years, he made appearances at NBA All-Star Weekend to specifically attend the HBCU Classic game showcasing underrepresented college players.
He could be seen on the sideline at basketball games well into his 70s and 80s.
“Even when he was physically not able to walk," Hoffler said, "he was still at some of those games in a wheelchair. That’s how much he was committed to the plight of athletes.”
AP Sports Writers Maura Carey and Kyle Hightower contributed to this report.
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