Don Terry spent the summer with Jesse Jackson but, in a way, he has tailed the reverend since 1980, when he and fellow graduate students at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism went to Chicago to watch Jackson give a press conference at PUSH.
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The challenge of writing about a public figure with rock-star name recognition, of course, is finding something fresh and important to say. Fortunately, Don is constitutionally unable to repeat conventional wisdom–so he was the perfect person to handle this week’s cover story, “God’s frequent flier.”
His solution? “I decided to do a kind of travelogue,” Don explains. “I wanted to see the world through his eyes. Whom did he meet, how much did he travel, what did people say to him?”
It turned into quite a cultural experience–watching Stevie Wonder sing at Luther Vandross’ funeral, chatting with Magic Johnson and running into Muhammad Ali, Russell Simmons and Diddy.
In Washington, a different world of entertainment, Don followed Jackson through meetings with Sens. Dick Durbin and Ted Kennedy. Don has not been home much this summer, but his mother shouldn’t mind-he could report to her that he met her hero, Congressman John Lewis.
In the end, well, ending was tough. “It’s hard to decide when to stop reporting out a Jesse Jackson story,” reflects Don. “He’s always doing something, always going somewhere. He never stops moving.”
After countless miles, Don found an appropriate ending in a day when America changed-when Hurricane Katrina unleashed her wrath.
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