The Rev. Jesse Jackson in Rock Hill: ‘It’s time to step forward’

Jonkheer Burns, Gerald Snell and Daniel Quattlebaum were among the Clinton College students uncomfortably singled out Wednesday.

When asked who in the college’s multipurpose gymnasium was not registered to vote, no one initially stood. After more cajoling, the trio of 18-year-olds and others reluctantly rose from their seats.

They were ushered to the front of the stage where, under the watchful and encouraging gaze of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, they completed voter registration cards.

It was an event they will never forget.

“We were put on the spot, but it’s a good thing,” Burns said. “We are all for change.”

“We were by his side,” Quattlebuam said.

“It was a real moment,” Snell said.

Burns, Quattlebaum and Snell became three of the more than 100,000 African-Americans Jackson wants to register to vote before the 2016 presidential primaries and national elections.

“If you don’t vote, you earn what you have got,” Jackson told a crowd of about 100 at the Rock Hill college.

Voter registration was one of the primary messages Jackson delivered Wednesday during a swing through the Carolinas. Voter registration is important for a number of reasons, he said, but he stressed if you want to change judicial outcomes you have to be registered to vote. Potential jurors are drawn from voter registration lists.

“There is a culture of exploiting race, poverty, and it’s tugging at the soul of America,” Jackson said. “It’s time to step forward.”

Jackson said while much progress has been made, minorities are still being profiled by “police, judges, banks, automakers.”

That’s why the incident Monday at Spring Valley High School in Columbia was racial, Jackson said.

“It’s racial; it’s the culture of South Carolina. In the struggle to overcome, there has been so much progress, but then there are instances like this,” he said.

Jackson said the female student was a “ward of the state” with disabilities. “The telephone was her lifeline; she was not talking to talk.”

He said the actions of the school resource officer, who flipped the student at her desk backward and tossed her across the classroom, were “excessive, abusive, embarrassing, humiliating, and wrong.

“The child needed help, not abuse.”

Jackson said the “criminal justice system undermines the possibilities of the New South.”

Voters should look for candidates who support easy access to voting, affordable health care, education, jobs and investment in America, Jackson said.

He said it was premature to make an endorsement in the presidential race but said he was impressed with the Democrats because they are focused on issues while the Republicans are “attacking” each other and creating division.

Jackson also said South Carolina should join the states who have accepted federal funds to expand Medicaid, bringing better health care to “lift people out of poverty.” He said the reluctance by some politicians to expand Medicaid because it would involve more federal government control was “a hangover from the Confederate ideas.”

He also called for voter registration reforms, using technology to automatically register American citizens to vote when they turn 18.

Jackson concluded that “we must fight back, fight back together to win.”

Students, such as those at Clinton – as those Friendship College students did in the 1960s – must be part of that fight, Jackson said. “The struggle to democratize America happens when young Americans come alive.”

He said there should be a statue on the Clinton campus to remember the sacrifices of the Friendship Nine students and their stance for civil rights. He also said Clinton students should petition to have an on-campus voting precinct.

“That’s worth marching for,” Jackson said.

Jackson’s message resonated with Burns, Snell and Quattlebaum.

The words that stuck with Quattlebaum were the chant Jackson frequently used throughout his speech: “Move forward with hope, don’t move backward by fear.”

For Burns, Wednesday’s experience showed him “I have to be on my ‘A’ game all the time.”

This story was originally published October 28, 2015 at 4:46 PM with the headline "The Rev. Jesse Jackson in Rock Hill: ‘It’s time to step forward’."