Inside the Stockton Memorial Civic Auditorium in May 1988, the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s words carried a cadence that weighed like a Sunday sermon.
The hall, made to seat up to 1,000 people, quickly filled to become standing-room only. Some sat perked on plastic fold out chairs. Others wore political round pins bearing the late reverend’s image.
And Jackson, before a star-flecked banner with the words “Jesse for America,” stood center in the hall’s uplifted stage, taking the podium for over an hour.
Jackson, a champion of the “Rainbow Coalition” meant to unite the poor and marginalized, died in his Chicago home Tuesday morning, his family said in a statement on social media. He was 84. In November, Jackson was hospitalized for progressive supranuclear palsy, a neurodegenerative condition that his family has said he managed for more than a decade.
Jackson’s brief campaign stop in Stockton during his presidential run marked his long affinity for the city. Photographic memories of the night now linger in a cracked frame in the office of Ralph Lee White, a former Stockton councilmember who described the nearly 40 year old scene to Stocktonia.
The black-and white photographs, scattered like a collage, are bittersweet for White. Having been friends for well over 60 years, White said he remembers Jackson “as a brother.”
“I could call him any time,” White said. “Anytime he came near Stockton, anywhere in Northern California, he was going to call me and let me know where he was at.”
Jackson ran a strong campaign in 1988, winning 13 states and finishing second to eventual Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis, who lost the general election to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush.
“He could have been president,” said White fondly of his friend. “He was president material. But, you know, the timing just wasn’t right.”
Farm worker advocate remembers Jackson’s support
Luis Magaña was then in his 20s when he stood on stage with Jackson as part of the coalition. Two years after his naturalization as a U.S. citizen, Magaña had clutched a hand-written, two-page note that advocated for the rights of migrant laborers.
Despite the letter being written entirely in Spanish, Magaña said Jackson was “fue amable” — kind — when he received the letter.
“Hearing his message, inclusive of all races … I felt identified, welcomed,” said Magaña of a speech that he said “touched Stockton.”
“At that moment,” added Magaña, who spoke Spanish in an interview with Stocktonia. “One felt hope.”
Jackson would later join labor leader Cesar Chavez in his 36-day fast in the Central Valley to protest the pesticide poisoning of agricultural workers, according to the United Farm Workers of America.
The labor union, in a social media post following Jackson’s death, described the reverend as a “faithful champion of the farm workers’ cause.”
At the rally, then-Lincoln High student Joseph Torres Jr. later snapped a photo of Jackson after the 1988 rally, the reverend flashing a thumbs-up as he exited the auditorium before disappearing behind a barricade of police motorcades and campaign buses.
Usually a sports photographer when asked by the high school paper, Torres Jr. said he had stepped in to cover the event. While the details of why he was assigned are fuzzy, Torres Jr said it may have been because no one else “wanted to go” to the part of town where the auditorium was located.
“My appreciation of the moments only deepened,” said Torres Jr., 55, who is currently a cinematographer. “As I’ve gotten older … I had a deeper understanding of the movement he was involved in, the people that he was around.”
Meeting an idol
Former Stockton Vice Mayor Kimberly Warmsley’s chance encounter with the late reverend— one that she would describe as breaking bread — came in 2024 at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Jackson, honored at the DNC event where Kamala Harris had officially become the party’s presidential nominee, had at one point sat in a banquet hall to meet with supporters, a line Warmsley called “relentless.”
Just as a noticeably tired Jackson moved to retire for the night, Warmsley said she had stopped one of his security men, name dropping Ralph White and her connection to Stockton as a former councilmember.
“You can tell he was pointing me out in the crowd,” said Warmsley of the safety staff member directing Jackson’s attention to her. “And then, all of a sudden, Reverend Jackson gestured to me, like, “Come, come.”
What Warmsley thought would be a quick introduction turned into a 20-minute conversation, she said, the civil rights leader rekindling his moments in Stockton and with his longtime friend, White.
The whole exchange felt like “an old reunion,” as Jackson and his family openly laughed and engaged with Warmsley, she said. The moment, Warmsley added, signaled that “Stockton was important” for the civil rights leader.
“I felt a sense of family — it made me feel whole,” said Warmsley, remembering she felt “humility” as the line of people lingered and watched their interaction. “He wanted to know what was happening in Stockton.”
On a recent afternoon in his home office, White and Warmsley looked through the older former council member’s collection of photos. Strewn through the office’s walls of historic newspaper clippings and monochrome scenes, hung some portraits of White and Jackson, the two old friends shoulder-to-shoulder.
The two had first met when White was 19 and Jackson in his early 20s. On a patio at an Atlanta restaurant, the two, with other organizers, had helped plan Martin Luther King Jr. ‘s Poor People’s March on Washington, White said.
“Could you imagine being in there with Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown?” White recalled to Warmsley as she shook her head in disbelief.
Days earlier, when White had received a call in the middle of the night about his friend’s death, he said the news hit him like “a wildfire.”
“He paved the way,” said White, referencing Jackson’s influence in the civil rights movement and setting the stage for Harris and Barack Obama. “Being around Jesse … made me jump fully.”
Magaña, now decades into his fight for Latino farm workers and migrants, said Jackson’s message, one he had first heard at the 1988 rally, left a “huella política” — a political mark — on him.
“He always had an impact … Now, we have something different,” said Magaña, referencing the Trump administration. “We have to keep fighting for our civil rights
Warmsley believes Jackson’s death should serve as an “awakening” to become more civically engaged.
“We need to be reimagining how we’re going to continue to uphold the torch,” Warmsley said of legacies that Jackson and other rights leaders have left behind. “To move us forward, not backwards.”