A whispered wish appeared to have blown wind into the sails of Barack Obama yesterday — propelling him towards the White House while pushing the remark’s author, the Rev Jesse Jackson, farther into history.

Mr Jackson was branded a voice from the past and faced condemnation from his son after his comments, intended as private, were picked up by a live microphone during a break in a television interview and later broadcast by the Fox News Channel.

The video showed him discussing the Democratic nominee’s position on faith-based issues, which he described as “talking down to black people”. He then made a cutting motion with his hand and declared: “I wanna cut his nuts out.”

Mr Jackson, for all his public remorse, may have inadvertently helped Mr Obama to distinguish himself from an older generation of black leaders whose views were forged in the bitter battles for voting rights more than 40 years ago.

Times Archive, 1984: What makes Jesse run

The Rev Jesse Jackson's astonishing eight-month journey to the finishing line at the Democratic convention was the very stuff of history

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The Rev Eugene Rivers, a pastor who regularly commentates on black church issues, said that African American politics were evolving from “the old-school, protest-orientated traditions” of Mr Jackson, who appeared “exhausted” and out of date. “Obama took the baton rather having it passed,” he added. “We’re moving from history and moving to the future.”

The sense of generational change was underlined by his son, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jnr — a national co-chairman of Mr Obama’s campaign — who denounced the remarks. “Rev Jackson is my dad and I’ll always love him,” he said, before adding: “He should keep hope alive and any personal attacks and insults to himself.”

Mr Jackson rose to prominence during the Civil Rights era. Mr Obama is seeking a broader appeal to whites. Nor does he spare the black community from criticism. He told African American students they must stop dreaming of becoming rap stars or basketball players and stay in school.

The Rev Jeremiah Wright threatened to drag Mr Obama back into traditional territory for a black politician when his racially-charged sermons became a key issue in the Democratic primary campaign. Mr Obama, who was beaten by Hillary Clinton among white working-class voters in the Appalachian region, was forced to sever all links with his former pastor.

Mr Jackson’s comments appeared to have been in response to a speech Mr Obama made in Chicago that pointed out that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households from where they were 20 times more likely to end up in prison.

Mr Jackson suggested that the high moral tone of Mr Obama’s lecture failed to recognise the “collective moral responsibility of government and the public policy, which would be a corrective action for the lack of good choices that often led to their irresponsibility”.

He has previously criticised Mr Obama for reacting too slowly and cautiously to the attempted murder charges filed against six black students who beat up a white boy in Jena, Louisiana, where nooses reminiscent of lynchings had been hung from a tree at their school.

He accused Mr Obama of “acting like he’s white”, according to a South Carolina newspaper. “If I were a candidate, I’d be all over Jena,” he said.

A life in the front line

— Born 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, he adopted the name of his stepfather, Charles Jackson, at 15

— Attended a segregated high school and won a football scholarship to the University of Illinois, before moving to study sociology in 1960

— Ordained as a Baptist minister in 1968 and accompanied Martin Luther King to Memphis. Was with King when he was assassinated in April that year

— Resigned from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1971 after being accused of using it for personal gain

— Campaigned against apartheid in South Africa in 1979 and later for an independent Palestinian state

— Gained praise for negotiating the release of US soldiers and civilians in Syria, Iraq and Yugoslavia

— Ran a campaign to register black Americans for voting in the 1980s

— In a 1984 conversation with a Washington Post reporter he upset New York’s Jews when he dismissed the city as “Hymietown”

— Ran for Demoratic presidential nomination in 1984 and staged a second bid in 1988, losing out to Michael Dukakis

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica

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