American civil rights leader, Baptist Minister and two-time Democratic Presidential nominee, Rev. Jesse Jackson, was in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, as a Guest Speaker at Isaac Boro Day lecture. He spoke on a wide range of issues in this interview with journalists. MIKE ODIEGWU was there. An excerpt:
You are from one of the most advanced democracies in the world, how much of democracy have you seen in Nigeria and Bayelsa State?
The American democracy which is just 40 years old is said to be hundreds of years old. Over 246 years, Africans in America were in slavery, they were not full citizens, they called it democracy but it was not. Hundred years of Jim Crow racial marginalisation, they called it democracy because white could rule, we could not, but it was not.
But in 1965 because of our struggle and because of the martyrs of that struggle most, like the Isaac Boros, these martyrs helped to redefine the American democracy and made it for the first time inclusive democracy. The first time African-Americans could vote and two years later in 1967 white women could serve on juries. In 1970, an 18 years old could vote and in 1974 you could vote on campuses and in 1975 you could vote bilingually. So, ours was democracy in the making and that has happened since 1948.
