My fellow Americans, it is my honor to introduce the next president of the United States of America,

the Reverend Jesse Lewis Jackson.

In 1984, Reverend Jesse Jackson took the stage at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco.

It was his first presidential campaign, and his speech was an urgent call to action.

We're not a perfect people, yet we are called to a perfect mission.

Our mission to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless, to teach the

illiterate, to provide jobs for the jobless, and to choose the human race over the nuclear race.

Jackson's rousing remarks called upon voters to be a part of a rainbow coalition of disenfranchised

Americans and people of color.

My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and to despise.

They are restless and seek relief.

They have voted in record numbers.

They have invested the faith, hope, and trust that they have in us.

Well, let me just tell you that as a young kid growing up in public housing down in Savannah, Georgia.

Jesse Jackson captured my imagination.

Jackson's message resonated with a young Raphael Warnock,

now a Democratic senator from Georgia and the first black senator in the state's history.

While Jackson didn't win the nomination in 1984,

nor during his second presidential run in 1988, his campaigns reshaped democratic politics.

I witnessed him call America to live up to its ideals. Watching him do that in real time

inspired me. When he said I am somebody, I believed him.

Jackson died last week at the age of 84, but he leaves a lasting legacy.

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