The Rev. Jesse Jackson’s rise to prominence began in 1960, when he and seven other black students walked into the segregated public library in their hometown of Greenville, South Carolina, and demanded to borrow books. The group, known as the “Greenville Eight,” made history by desegregating that library and eventually much of their hometown.
Dorris Wright was one of the eight students, and she joined Here & Now’s Scott Tong to reflect on Jackson’s life.
3 questions with Dorris Wright
What are your thoughts today on Jesse Jackson?
“I’m saddened today. I’ve known Jesse for maybe 70 years. We went to the same elementary school. We went to the same high school. And so that’s our history. We grew up in the segregated town of Greenville, South Carolina. But we made the best of it.”
You made a whole lot of history. So let me ask you about the Greenville eight. The two of you were part of these eight students challenging the segregated city library. You conducted a sit-in. And I understand when the police came in, your group left, and you were told to go back in as part of the sit-in. What happened that day?
“Well, that day Jesse was home. He was a year ahead of me in high school, and he was home for the summer. And he had a paper to do. And there were two libraries in Greenville. There was a white library and the colored library, and the colored library did not have reference books like ‘Who’s Who in America’ and only one daily newspaper, which was ‘The New York Times.’
“So, we were going up there trying to use the library so that he [Jackson] could get the information that he needed when he returned back to school [at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign].
“So, they had a propensity in Greenville to shut the lights down. So, when they shut the lights down, we left. And our youth adviser said, ‘No, that’s not why I sent you. So, you go back.’ So we went back and the rest was history. They arrested us. There were eight of us at that time. And I didn’t realize that it was would make that kind of impact because the city that was next to Greenville, which is Spartanburg, South Carolina, they had desegregated their library before we had. And of course, the mayor said he was not going to go through that. And the library was shut down, I think, for about a week or ten days. And then when they reopened, they reopened it to everybody.”
What do you remember about Jesse Jackson’s role in the Greenville Eight?
“Jesse, before he graduated high school, we had reorganized the Youth Council of the NAACP. I was elected president of the Youth Council, and he was a member. So, we were very active. And what we looked at as youth, there were places that we could go but not really be served.
“Case in point: F.W. Woolworth had two lunch counters, and at that time, the white patrons sat in the front of the lunch counter and the colored patrons sat in the back behind the birds and bees and fish. So, we didn’t think that that was very sanitary. So, we set out to look at unjust laws in Greenville. We knew that our parents could not protest because if they had, they would have lost their jobs. So, it was left to the youth. The civil rights movement was carried on primarily by the youth.”
What was he like, the young Jesse Jackson?
“He was loved by all of his classmates. He was loved by the teachers. He played baseball. He played football. And he played basketball. I was a majorette and he was a quarterback of the football team.
“At halftime, he made sure that we were positioned and where we were supposed to be. And most people don’t know this, so I’ll share with those that may be listening: Jesse had a nickname that we called Bo Diddley. I don’t know where it came from, but when he burst on to the national scene, he was classic Jesse.
“He never forgot from whence he came. There was always that soft point that you saw with Jesse and that you felt. It wasn’t always what he said. It was visceral. It’s what you felt. And I’m going to miss him. I really am.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Lynn Menegon produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Michael Scotto adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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