thinking about school. We were city kids learning how to range.
I spent a lot of my time with a classmate named Santita Jackson, who in the mornings boarded the Jeffery bus a few stops after I did and who became one of my best friends in high school. Santita had beautiful dark eyes, full cheeks, and the bearing of a wise woman, even at sixteen. At school, she was one of those kids who signed up for every AP class available and seemed to ace them all. She wore skirts when everyone else wore jeans and had a singing voice so clear and powerful that she’d end up touring years later as a backup singer for Roberta Flack. She was also deep. It’s what I loved most about Santita. Like me, she could be frivolous and goofy when we were with a larger group, but on our own we’d get ponderous and intense, two girl-philosophers together trying to sort out life’s issues, big and small. We passed hours sprawled on the floor of Santita’s room on the second floor of her family’s white Tudor house in Jackson Park Highlands, a more affluent section of South Shore, talking about things that irked us and where our lives were headed and what we did and didn’t understand about the world. As a friend, she was a good listener and insightful, and I tried to be the same.
Santita’s father was famous. This was the primary, impossible-to-get-around fact of her life. She was the eldest child of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the firebrand Baptist preacher and increasingly powerful political leader. Jackson had worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr. and risen to national prominence himself in the early 1970s as the founder of a political organization called Operation PUSH, which advocated for the rights of underserved African Americans. By the time we were in high school, he’d become an outright celebrity—charismatic, well connected, and constantly on the move. He toured the country, mesmerizing crowds with thundering calls for black people to shake off the undermining ghetto stereotypes and claim their long-denied political power. He preached a message of relentless, let’s-do-this self-empowerment. “Down with dope! Up with hope!” he’d call to his audiences. He had schoolkids sign pledges to turn off the TV and devote two hours to their homework each night. He made parents promise to stay involved. He pushed back against the feelings of failure that permeated so many African American communities, urging people to quit with the self-pity and take charge of their own destiny. “Nobody, but nobody,” he’d yell, “is too poor to turn off the TV two hours a night!”
Hanging around Santita’s house could be exciting. The place was roomy and a little chaotic, home to the family’s five children and stuffed with heavy Victorian furniture and antique glassware that Santita’s mom, Jacqueline, liked to collect. Mrs. Jackson, as I called her, had an expansive spirit and a big laugh. She wore colorful, billowy clothes and served meals at a massive table in the dining room, hosting anyone who turned up, mostly people who belonged to what she called “the movement.” This included business leaders, politicians, and poets, plus a coterie of famous people, from singers to athletes.
When Reverend Jackson was at home, a different energy pulsed through the house. Routines were cast aside; dinner conversations lasted late into the night. Advisers came and went. Plans were always being made. Unlike at my apartment on Euclid, where life ran at an orderly and predictable pace, where my parents’ concerns rarely extended beyond keeping our family happy and on track for success, the Jacksons seemed caught up in something larger, messier, and seemingly more impactful. Their engagement was outward; their community was big, their mission important. Santita and her siblings were being raised to be politically active. They knew how and what to boycott. They marched for their father’s causes. They went on his work trips, visiting places like Israel and Cuba, New York and Atlanta. They’d stood on stages in front of big crowds and were learning to absorb the anxiety and controversy that came with having a father, maybe especially a black father, in public life. Reverend Jackson had bodyguards—large, silent men who traveled with him. At the time, it only half registered with me that there had been threats against his life.
Santita adored her father and was proud of his work, but she was also trying to live her own life.