Jesse Jackson was a \u201cdirect connection to the great era of civil rights\u201d, Diane Abbott said, leading UK tributes to the African American campaigner.<\/p>\n
The Rev Jackson was also intimately connected to the battle for racial equality in the UK, where he campaigned for decades to address institutional racism, as well as economic, health and criminal justice inequalities.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis message is absolutely relevant today, when we are seeing a resurgence of racism in a way that we hoped had been banished,\u201d Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Afrikan Reparations, said in tribute to the civil rights leader, whose death, at the age of 84 was announced on Tuesday<\/a>.<\/p>\n She added: \u201cHe stood on a (pan-African<\/a>) tradition that we saw from the likes of (Marcus) Garvey <\/a>and (Kwame) Nkrumah, that international solidarity was key to the liberation of peoples of African descent.\u201d<\/p>\n That lifelong journey of solidarity brought Jackson to Manchester, to a packed Church of God of Prophecy in Moss Side in 2007.<\/p>\n That visit marked the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery \u2013 the industry that had fuelled the city\u2019s wealth, while scarring the ancestors of so many of its Black residents.<\/p>\n Jackson\u2019s visit to Manchester \u2013 part of a nine-city \u201cEquanomics\u201d<\/a> tour that also stopped in Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Nottingham and Sheffield \u2013 reflected how, for Jackson, economic, racial and social justice were inseparable, and how African descendant communities in the UK and America were linked by the shared experience of Black minority status in the west.<\/p>\n To rapturous applause from Black communities across the country, Jackson prefigured the conversations that became mainstream in the UK \u2013 after the death of George Floyd in the US \u2013 about the UK\u2019s failure to recognise the Black contribution to the national story.<\/p>\n In Bristol, Jackson told his audience: \u201cWe as Africans are creditors, not debtors. Our energies fuelled the Industrial Revolution. We fought and died in World War One and World War Two.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Bristol, you are the creditors. You are owed. Have a new sense of yourselves. You are the creditor, not the debtor. Today we are free but not equal.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout his life<\/a>, whenever Black British communities reeled \u2013 in the aftermath of uprisings, killings and systemic injustices \u2013 Jackson was an encouraging, inspirational presence, flying over from the US to stand with affected communities. He was there for landmark moments, too, meeting Diane Abbott, the country\u2019s first Black female MP, who remembers him as \u201cvery smart, warm and hugely charismatic,\u201d.<\/p>\n Two years before Abbott\u2019s election, Jackson had urged Margaret Thatcher to drop UK support for apartheid in South Africa, after joining with Abbott, Paul Boateng, Bernie Grant and Ken Livingstone at a Trafalgar Square protest to end apartheid and free Nelson Mandela attended by 120,000 people.<\/p>\n He had long fought against the marginalisation of Black history. When the pan-African activist Akyaaba Addai-Sebo<\/a>, then a worker at the Greater London Council, staged the lectures and concerts that would sow the seeds for UK Black History Month, Jackson was among the attenders \u2013 alongside activists Angela Davis, Winnie Mandela, Marcus Garvey Jr and musical greats Ray Charles, Burning Spear, Hugh Masekela and Max Roach.<\/p>\n Having grown up in the segregated American South, campaigning for civil rights and economic justice alongside Dr Martin Luther King, Jackson was a lifelong campaigner for democratic participation.<\/p>\n In 2013, 50 years after King was assassinated, Jackson came to the UK in support of Operation Black Vote, a cause he backed for years, and spoke of how he hoped the US civil rights struggle would continue to inspire campaigning for unity and equality in the UK.<\/p>\n He told the BBC: \u201cWhen we got the right to vote in 1965, it was not just Blacks as was commonly thought; white women couldn\u2019t serve on juries, 18-year-olds couldn\u2019t vote, you couldn\u2019t vote on campuses and you could not vote bilingually, so we had to learn to move from surviving separately to living together.<\/p>\n \u201cInclusion leads to growth, when there\u2019s growth everybody wins \u2026 When you look at whoever\u2019s playing football in this country, why do they do so well in football, Black, white together? Because when the playing field is even and the rules are public and the goals are clear, the referee is fair and the score is transparent, we do well.\u201d<\/p>\n After news broke of Jackson\u2019s death, Operation Black Vote founder Lord Simon Woolley told the Voice<\/a>: \u201cI was fortunate enough to know him not only as a public figure, but as a mentor and collaborator. Together, we worked to register tens of thousands of Black and Brown voters here in the UK. What began as inspiration grew into a friendship that lasted nearly 30 years.\u201d<\/p>\n Ribeiro-Addy recalls having to be told gently by Woolley to wrap up a speech she gave at an event where Jackson appeared in Nottingham, more than 15 years ago, which was running over time as she \u201creally wanted to impress\u201d him.<\/p>\n