Bishop Harry Jackson: Racism, lynching of blacks, KKK and the need for racial healing

Bishop Harry Jackson states in the interview with Hanne Nabintu Herland: “I believe we are in a time in which God himself is exposing America and saying this is who we really are. And before your viewers get angry at me, I want to say that racism is not only a white man’s problem.”

“We got some horrible racists who are talking about taking up arms. Many people who have been in this nation feel like their only hope is to take up arms and retaliate. Like the guy in Dallas, who took up arms and started killing policemen. That was a manifestation of race masked by somewhat religious convictions. But, in my opinion it was inspired by darkness and demonic energy.”

Bishop Harry Jackson explains: “My fathers story has really colored my experience in America. When I was one year old, my dad was a senior at Florida ANM University. He was involved in the voter registration during the older days. When blacks really didn’t have free access to vote. There was great discrimination.”

“So, one night my father was on his way home from a voter registration event and he was stopped by a state trooper in the state of Florida, not far from Florida ANM University. The state trooper made him kneel and took out his weapon and put it right next to his ear and discharged the weapon right next to my dad’s ear, temporarily deafening my dad.  Then he said, using the N-word; “If you do anything like that again. Next time I’ll kill you!”

“So, my dad got up from his knees. I imagine him starting to walk away and the walk turns into a run and then a jog. By the time he came home, he told this story many times to us. He decided that he was going to leave the South as soon as he graduated. My grandfather had moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and he moved us there as well.”

“That was the new beginning for the rest of my father’s life. He was involved in politics, not running for office, but during election time, there would be a sign for one politician in our yard. We even had signs on top of our cars. So, he was very much involved in politics. He thought that the right to vote was a sacred right.”

“There were many people that weren’t as fortunate as he was. They didn’t survive. Many of them were actually murdered by the KKK when trying to claim their rights to vote. So, my mother volunteered every year at the poles until she was 83 years old. Because she believed that was such an important message.”

Bishop Harry Jackson states in the interview with Hanne Nabintu Herland: “One of the things we noticed while growing up was that where there was lynching of blacks, there would also be persecution and the same kind of oppression against Jewish people.”

“In America, there was the Jews who helped begin the NAACP. NAACP came out of the 1917-18 era and the anti-lynching movement that blacks were just randomly tortured and lynched.”

” Some of the people that first meant to do something about this lynching of blacks were whites and along side a large number of Jews. They funded these efforts, so the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) was actually funded and begun by non-blacks. It wasn’t until the late 1960s when you had the first black executive director of the NAACP.”

“In fact, their organizing meetings happened in New York City in a home of a very wealthy New York businessman and the then mayor of New York was in the meeting and Jewish money helped fund this organisation. So, it was a racial reconciliation organization at its beginning.”

“Today unfortunately, many of those folks have lost their way or I like to say jokingly, they’ve fallen off the bus and bumped their head in that they forgotten their roots. Its not that were anti whites in ACP. Were supposed to be anti-racial oppression and racism, and so they kind of lost sight of the original purpose of the organisation.”

“I will never, though, forget me being 12 years old sitting down with my dad in the kitchen of our home in Avondale, Cincinnati. He began to tell me that he felt that racism was an emotional and mental disease and he said some of the people who helped me most in my life have been white and some of the most who have done the most reprehensible things to us as a family and to me personally, have been black.”

“He said that I shouldn’t judge people by their skin colour. This was before Dr. Kings statements became so famous etc. This is a credo that my dad lived by and so he sent us to a private school that cost thousands of dollars and he said: “Son, after I’ve died you are not going to have an inheritance from me.”

“I’m giving you your inheritance now and I want you simply to go to the highest-grade education that you could go to and I want you to be the best version of yourself that you could possibly be. Whether it would be a garbage man or carpenter or whatever you will be.”

Bishop Harry Jackson: We went through this long speech about destiny, anti-racism and the need and power for education. I thought it was an amazing time. So, he entrusted us with this view. In my own life, many of the people that helped me, when I was one of the first blacks to go to a private school in America, were Jewish people. In that school they helped me. They were the first ones, I was the first black kid there, I had older kids beat me up, called me the N-word.”

“But the Jewish kids took me in. Many of them were very wealthy and I found that the Jewish kids had become wealthy because of the tradition of training. Jews, only 2% of the American population. But they developed in their children the ability to articulate to talk, discuss, and gave them a hunger for learning.”

“They also pursued ideals that many blacks copied. Being that hard work would get you out of the ghetto. Many of your Jewish entrepreneurs have, if you look at America, PGDs, they have a disproportionate number of advanced degrees because they believe that they learned a lot become articulate and persuasive. They would be able to pursue their own destinies, they started businesses and I found out that they have a theological belief that they believe in really capitalism in this way.”

“If you serve mankind and you make money in the process, that’s good money. It’s the right money. There is a philosophy about what it means to be a righteous man and to give to the needs of others. The most generous people in America, you’ll find in the top 12 of those people. About 7 out of the top 10 and 14 out of the top 12 are of Jewish descent.”