“I am—Somebody!
I may be poor, but I am—Somebody!
I may be young, but I am—Somebody!
I may be on welfare, but I am—Somebody!
I may be small, but I am—Somebody!
I may have made mistakes, but I am—Somebody!
My clothes are different,
My face is different,
My hair is different,
But I am—Somebody!
I am Black, Brown, or White.
I speak a different language,
But I must be respected, protected, never rejected.
I am God’s child

With “I Am Somebody” Jesse Jackson handed dignity to kids, workers, and marginalized individuals  in these words. Say it once and you can hear the crowd answer back empowered.

The man who spoke these words was born in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1941, to a sixteen-year-old mother who raised him under Jim Crow. Jesse Louis Jackson spent his childhood walking past the whites-only school on his route to an inferior one, absorbing the daily routine of exclusion.

His words “I Am Somebody” were more than a chant. They were a declaration.

A reminder to our children.

A  reminder to the Black community

A reminder to a  nation that  tried to tell African Americans otherwise.

Thank you Reverend Jackson, you were somebody, indeed.