Jackson Heats Up Harvard

Speaking from the sidelines of the impending presidential election, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson urged Southern white voters last night to put aside “racial fears” and elect a Democrat to replace President Bush.

In his speech at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, Jackson said Southern voters, who offered Bush overwhelming support in 2000, had since been left out to dry by the White House.

“They got a tax cut, a jobs cut and a benefits cut,” Jackson said.

Jackson’s remarks came on the heels of Bush’s cameo appearance Sunday at the Daytona 500, where the president courted a largely white and Southern constituency of “NASCAR dads.”

But in an interview prior to his speech yesterday, Jackson downplayed the president’s support among white male Southerners.

“I’m a NASCAR dad,” Jackson said. “I like car races. NASCAR dads that I know like two things: they like car races and they like jobs and benefits. With Bush, they get half of that.”

Bill Shack of Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition last year called NASCAR “the last bastion of white supremacy,” but the reverend distanced himself from those comments yesterday.

In his signature lilting tone, Jackson promised “voter registration and racial reconciliation” in the South while stressing the importance of capital as the final frontier of the Civil Rights Movement.

“Wall Street was built on the African slave trade,” Jackson said as he called for more black and Hispanic fund managers at the nation’s largest investment firms.

“Harvard has a roughly $20-billion endowment and no black or brown managers,” Jackson said prior to his speech.

The reverend said he focused on Harvard’s dearth of minority fund managers in a meeting yesterday with University President Lawrence H. Summers.

“Many whites manage money like one-eyed quarterbacks,” Jackson said. “They can’t see the whole field.”

The meeting came two years after the reverend questioned Summers’ commitment to affirmative action at a press conference in Cambridge.

“Harvard must be a beacon of light for the nation, not a shadow of doubt,” Jackson told The Crimson in 2002.

But Jackson said yesterday he was satisfied with the University’s affirmative-action policy and focused his attention instead on minority fund managers.

“The next stage of our struggle is not just to have our share of students and faculty or our share of administrators, but our share of capital,” Jackson said.

With the issue of gay marriage at the forefront of Massachusetts politics, Jackson said he supported full rights for homosexuals but objected to comparisons with the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

“No slave was ever enslaved because he was gay,” Jackson said.

And in remarks to a group of student leaders over lunch yesterday, Jackson said he would not be inclined to perform weddings for same-sex couples, according to Christopher R. Hughes ’06, who attended the event.

Jackson promised his support—and his supporters—to the eventual Democratic nominee.

“We’re going to give Bush time to go back and finish his National Guard service,” Jackson said.

And while Jackson acknowledged that Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., would likely emerge as the nominee, the reverend reserved his greatest praise for Gov. Howard B. Dean, D-Vt.

“Howard Dean made a contribution that will be as big as the one made by the nominee,” Jackson said. “He set the pace.”

Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr., D-Ill., endorsed Dean’s campaign last year, but his father has remained neutral in the primary season.

Last night, the elder Jackson promised a strong, grassroots campaign for the Democratic nominee, citing the success of Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura in mobilizing unregistered voters.

At the Kennedy School of Government yesterday, Ventura, a fellow at the Institute of Politics who won his gubernatorial race in 1998 as a candidate on the Reform party ticket, said both he and Jackson faced similar impediments posed by Democratic and Republican attempts to marginalize outside voices.

“The two parties won’t allow any splits or won’t allow us into the game,” Ventura said.

—Staff writer Zachary M. Seward can be reached at seward@fas.harvard.edu.