I am going to begin this remembrance with my own personal story, minimal though it is. In 1988, I attended a political speech given by Reverend Jesse Jackson. He was running for president at the time, in his second national campaign for the Democratic nomination. Unfortunately, the arena he had booked was filled to overflowing by the time I showed up, so we heard the speech on speakers placed outside the venue. So while I didn't actually see Jackson speak, at least I got to hear his oratory.

After he was done, he came outside and worked his way down a rope line of people. Somehow I happened to be standing in the right place (unintentionally, I don't remember actually pushing forward to claim a spot, it just kind of happened where I had been standing for the speech) and was one of the people who got to shake Jackson's hand. The most memorable thing about it, though, came from a woman next to me who shouted: "Kiss my baby, Jesse!" and offered up her swaddled child. Jackson couldn't resist and stopped his progress down the line, gently took the child, cuddled it for a moment, and then gave it a big kiss. Admittedly, it was downright cliché to see a politician kiss a baby, but I was impressed by how well he handled it and what a touching human moment it truly was.

I was in my early 20s at the time, and wasn't that involved or even all that interested in politics. Coming of age in the era of Ronald Reagan's landslide victories meant it was a pretty dispiriting time to be a liberal, since the country as a whole seemed to be heading in a very different direction. I did attend plenty of protest marches (many on the National Mall in Washington D.C.), but they always dealt with specific issues rather than being held to promote a single politician. Looking back, I think Jackson's speech was the only one I ever attended by a presidential candidate until I went to hear Bernie Sanders at the start of his first run. So it wasn't a usual thing for me to do, as you can see. But back in that dark Reaganite era, Jackson was different -- he was uplifting.

Democrats, at the time, weren't given much in the way of hopeful choices in their presidential nominees. Walter Mondale and Mike Dukakis weren't exactly brimming with charismatic energy, to put it mildly (all comments about Mondale and Dukakis are, almost by definition, mild). Jackson, though, wasn't anything like them. He was genuinely inspiring -- which is a rare quality indeed for any politician to have (even though most of them strive for it).

Of course, in 1988, I pretty much knew Jackson's campaign was a hopeless cause. Even if he had managed to win the Democratic nomination, there wasn't much of a chance that America was going to elect a Black man president in the general election. We were just too racist a nation for it to happen, at the time. In fact, right up until the night of the 2008 election, I didn't really expect to see a Black person elected president in my lifetime -- and I also assumed that if any had gotten close, they would have been assassinated at some point. But somehow when Jackson spoke, he inspired the belief that maybe it could actually happen.

Jackson wasn't just inspiring, he was an orator. He spoke in the cadence of a Southern preacher, which isn't too surprising since that's exactly what he was. He filled his speeches with emotional appeals to humankind's better nature, and instilled a belief that there was a different way to run the country that would benefit everyone.

Jackson began life in South Carolina under Jim Crow. He knew racism and discrimination intimately and personally, having lived through the Civil Rights era. And when he was roughly the same age as I was when I heard him speak, he had already been fighting the good fight for Civil Rights for years. He was one of the youngest leaders directly mentored by the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior, and was present in Memphis when King was assassinated. King even quoted him in his final "I have been to the mountaintop" speech: "As Jesse Jackson has said, 'Up to now, only the garbagemen have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain.'"

Jesse Jackson wasn't universally loved within the Civil Rights movement. He was accused of attention-seeking (by King himself, even) and after King's death was accused of trying to present himself as King's successor in leading the movement. But by the 1980s, Jackson was leading his own organization and had indeed been more successful than most of the rest of the people fighting for civil rights. No matter what you thought of his methods of gaining attention, it was hard to argue with what Jackson had managed to achieve in Chicago (which was his permanent base of operations). Jackson worked tirelessly to push businesses to hire Black people and spoke of turning the crusade for racial justice into a crusade for everyone's economic justice. He firmly believed that if poor Blacks and poor Whites could stop fighting each other and find common cause against the economic forces holding them back, that society as a whole would benefit.

In 1984, Jackson created the "Rainbow Coalition" and ran for president for the first time. Jackson's speech to the Democratic National Convention laid out his basic argument:

America is not like a blanket -- one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The White, the Hispanic, the Black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the Native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt.

[Historical note: I should mention for those too young to have lived through the era that, at the time, the rainbow flag wasn't universally known as a gay rights symbol yet. Jackson was speaking more of a rainbow of peoples all working together for the common good of all, but to his credit he did -- in an era when few politicians would -- speak of gay and lesbian people inclusively.]

Jackson leaned in to the idea of economic equality, so much so that you hear echoes of his words in speeches by populists such as Bernie Sanders today. Jackson spoke of leaving the "racial battleground and come to economic common ground and moral higher ground." And, just like Bernie does today, his words inspired many young people to believe that America could do better.

Jackson was not the first Black person to run a nationwide campaign for president, as Shirley Chisholm had that honor. But Jackson had a notable amount of success, becoming the first Black person to win statewide primaries, winning Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington D.C. in 1984. He got over three million votes nationwide and finished third in a field of eight. He made plenty of people believe that a Black man could indeed be president some day, which was a monumental achievement for the time.

In 1988, Jackson's second presidential campaign was even more impressive. He outlasted other prominent Democrats in the race (including Joe Biden, Al Gore, Richard Gephardt, Lloyd Bentsen, and Gary Hart) and wound up winning around a dozen primaries and caucuses (the number varies from 11 to 13, depending on how they are counted). Almost seven million Democratic primary voters cast their ballots for Jackson. At the Democratic National Convention, Jackson had over 1,200 delegates, but Michael Dukakis had almost 2,900 and won the nomination. But for a brief moment during the campaign, Jackson was the frontrunner in pledged delegates -- an incredibly impressive achievement on its own.

Jackson continued his theme when he spoke at the convention that year:

We find common ground at the plant gate that closes on workers without notice. We find common ground at the farm auction, where a good farmer loses his or her land to bad loans or diminishing markets. Common ground at the schoolyard where teachers cannot get adequate pay, and students cannot get a scholarship, and can't make a loan. Common ground at the hospital admitting room, where somebody tonight is dying because they cannot afford to go upstairs to a bed that's empty waiting for someone with insurance to get sick. We are a better nation than that.

This was the time of "Reaganomics," which was the label given to (as Jackson put it) "the belief that the rich had too little money and the poor had too much." It is not only the career of Barack Obama but also of today's Democratic populists that metaphorically stand on Jackson's shoulders. Jesse Jackson probably did more than anyone else of his time in boosting Black power in the Democratic Party, registering new voters by the millions and changing the party's outlook in the process.

Jackson was a mentor to many others, from Al Sharpton to Donna Brazile. Two of his sons have served in Congress. He fought for issues that the Democratic Party was unwilling to address at the time, from gay rights to fighting for the rights of Palestinians and against South Africa's apartheid. His positive influence reached from the boardrooms of major corporations (who were shamed into hiring more Black people) to foreign lands (where Jackson personally negotiated for the release of many Americans being held in prison by hostile countries' leaders).

Jackson was not without flaws. He was human, and he made mistakes. The most common complaint about Jackson was that he was "self-serving" or "attention-seeking." But then, what politician isn't, really? As for his other shortcomings, I leave that subject for others to address (de mortuis nil nisi bonum).

Jesse Jackson achieved more success in American politics than any Black activist in the post-King era. Without his two campaigns for president, Barack Obama's victory likely would not have been possible. His preacher's cadence and the subjects of his oratory inspired millions of Americans, Black and White, old and young. I was one of the young ones. My interaction with Jackson consisted of shaking his hand on a rope line and watching him ignore the aides who were trying to hustle him along, come to a full stop, and take the time to lovingly kiss a baby -- who happened to be White (not that it matters, but it did back then to far too many people). But I will always remember Jackson for giving people hope. Hope that a better and fairer and kinder world was possible. Hope that America might elect a president one day who wasn't a White male. And hope that Dr. King's dream lived on.

Requiescat In Pace, Jesse.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant