Remembering Jesse Jackson: Long Island woman recalls running his presidential campaigns in Connecticut

In 1991, the Rev. Jesse Jackson traveled to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and from there walked more than 55 miles to Hartford in one week to protest poverty.

Included among those who accompanied him were a dozen homeless veterans.

"Jesse noticed that they ... didn’t really have good shoes on," said Sandi Brewster-walker Jackson’s former Connecticut primary director and a North Amityville resident. "So he had someone go out and buy them sneakers."

About a month later, Jackson invited those men to Washington, D.C. But when their bus from Connecticut didn’t stop to pick them up, Jackson gave Brewster-walker his credit card information over the phone in the middle of the night to pay for their Amtrak tickets.

Those stories are just some of the many ways Brewster-walker, executive director and government affairs officer for the Montaukett Indian Nation, remembered Jackson during an interview Friday.

Jackson, who died at the age of 84 last Tuesday, will lie in state at his Chicago-based Rainbow PUSH Coalition Thursday and Friday, and there will be services for him in South Carolina and Washington, D.C., March 1 through March 6, the coalition said on its website. A request for him to lie in state at the Capitol was declined.

Brewster-walker, who ran his presidential campaign in Connecticut in 1984 and 1988, spoke with Newsday about Jackson’s life and legacy. She described Jackson's death as "the passing of a generation."

How were you approached to be a part of Jackson’s campaign?

Two times a week, Brewster-walker worked for the Black caucus in Hartford under civil rights activist and former state Sen. Wilber Smith. In late 1983, Smith approached Brewster-walker, informing her that Jackson was going to run for president and they needed a primary director for Connecticut.

Smith asked Brewster-walker if she was up for the job.

"All of us knew about, or I knew about Jesse, ever since he did the Operation Breadbasket," she said, noting Jackson’s 1966 Chicago initiative that pressured companies to hire more Black workers. "It was exciting."

Why did you say yes?

Brewster-walker said she comes from a long line of activists on both sides of her family, which is majority Montaukett Native American.

Some of her well-known relatives, Augustus Michael Hodges and Augustus Michael Hodges, were abolitionist writers during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.

"This is something in our DNA," she said.

Growing up in the 1960s, Brewster-walker said activism was part of the environment, and she recalled going down to the March on Washington in 1963 where she heard the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. give his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Before becoming an engineer, Brewster-walker taught high school history in Middletown upstate, and ran for school board. She moved to Connecticut when her then-husband transferred jobs.

Brewster-walker said she persuaded her employer PerkinElmer to let her travel to Hartford each week, to continue her activism work.

"I was already being prepared, I think, mentally ... for what I ended up doing when Jesse’s campaign came to Connecticut," she said.

She remembered feeling inspired when Shirley Chisholm became the first Black person to run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972.

But Jackson was someone whom Brewster-walker related to and was just a year older than her.

"Now you have somebody that was my age, and he's running for president," she said. "I really just thought he was going to win."

What was it like to run the campaign in Connecticut?

"It was rough," she said. "It was hard."

After receiving training in Washington, D.C., Brewster-walker said she led a large grassroots and door-knocking campaign in 1984 throughout the state to gain delegates and raise funds.

"Grassroots really means you don't have any money in structure to run the campaign. You have to put it all together," she said. "We hit every church you could think of, every denomination in Connecticut."

What was it like to work with the Rev. Jesse Jackson?

Brewster-walker remembers being "impressed" when she first met Jackson, and how he presented a presidential image.

"He kind of made you feel like you were really ... important to the whole campaign," she said.

Once on a flight, Jackson asked Brewster-walker to sit next to him and take notes as he dictated a speech, while other campaign members sat at the back

"I look back at Frank, [the Rev. Frank Watkins] and Frank is laughing," she said. "Then when I got off the plane, he said, 'Sandi, that's why nobody sits near him. ... He [Jackson] never stops working.' "

She recalled another time witnessing Jackson’s photographic memory right before a speaking event at Fairfield University. She briefed him on then-President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and he didn't take notes.

"I didn't even know he was paying that much attention when I was talking to him, but everything I said to him came back verbatim," she said on Jackson’s talk at the school.

What were the differences in the Connecticut presidential primaries between 1984 and 1988?

"I don't think there was any doubt he was going to run again," Brewster-walker said of the expectations after 1984.

She said running the campaign was "much easier" in 1988 because many more people were "really supporting" Jackson, from different denominations and especially among voters of color.

“Eighty-four was trying to convince people that he could get delegates. ... Winning three or four delegates was a big deal ... people thought at first it was almost like a token campaign," Brewster-walker said. "But then they found out, this is real. He might make it."

In the 1984 primary, Jackson placed third with 26,395 votes, or 12% of votes, according to the Connecticut state website.

While he came in second to Michael Dukakis in the 1988 primary, he garnered 28.3%, or 68,372 votes.