I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: racism

  • Remembering Jesse Jackson’s Impact on LGBTQ+ Rights

    Remembering Jesse Jackson’s Impact on LGBTQ+ Rights


    Jesse Louis Burns was born October 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina. His mother was 18-year-old Helen Burns (1923-2015), and his father was her 33-year-old neighbor Noah Louis Robinson who was married to someone else. One year after Jesse was born his mother married Charles Henry Jackson, who later adopted him. Jesse took his step-father’s last name but remained in contact with Robinson until his passing in 1997.

    An ordained Baptist minister, Jackson became involved with the Civil Rights Movement through Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He had participated in the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery and won Dr. King’s confidence. That was the starting point for six decades of activism for equal justice and liberty for all.

    Rev. Jackson had two unsuccessful campaigns for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 1984 and 1988. He advanced the concept of a Rainbow Coalition that included the LGBT community in a speech to the Democratic Convention in 1984:

    “We must address their concerns and make room for them,” he said of a constellation of oppressed people. “The Rainbow includes lesbians and gays,” Jackson said to cheers. “No American citizen ought to be denied equal protection from the law.”

    Jackson followed up on that commitment in 1987, when he spoke at the second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, soon after announcing his second bid for president.

    “We gather today to say that we insist on equal protection under the law for every American, for workers’ rights, women’s rights, for the rights of religious freedom, the rights of individual privacy, for the rights of sexual preference. We come together for the rights of all American people,” Jackson declared.

    Jesse Jackson’s “Rainbow Coalition” was more than just another rhetorical flourish from the legendary orator. He gave real substance to the phrase by uniting black and brown people, the poor, and — an important, but less remembered part of his legacy — LGBTQ+ people.

    (Greg Owen, LGBTQ Nation, February 17, 2026)

    I was thirty-eight years old when I heard Jesse Jackson speak about his Rainbow Coalition that included lesbians like me. In that 1984 national campaign for the Democratic Nomination for President, Jackson carried five primaries and caucuses: Louisiana, Virginia, the District of Columbia, one of two separate contests in Mississippi, and…South Carolina. (Wikipedia) He was the first Black candidate to win any major party state primary or caucus. He had my vote in both campaigns.

    Whether the issues were health care during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s or marriage equality thirty years later, Rev. Jesse Jackson understood institutional wrongdoing and called it out.

    “Marriage is based on love and commitment — not sexual orientation. I support the right of any person to marry the person of their choosing,” Jackson declared at a rally outside the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco in December, 2010.

    (Rev. Irene Monroe, Whosoever, February 19, 2026)

    ************************

    I leave you today while mourning the loss of another champion of equal justice, not a perfect man, but someone who lives on in those who labor for a harvest yet unseen. During Black History Month we acknowledge his passing, celebrate his service, and ask for the wings of angels to lift him to a better place. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Jesse Jackson labored with love.

    Thank you, Rev. Jackson, for reminding me years ago that “I Am Somebody.” I will miss you.

    Jesse Louis Jackson (October 08, 1941 – February 17, 2026)

  • Elana Meyers Taylor: Historic Win in Women’s Monobob

    Elana Meyers Taylor: Historic Win in Women’s Monobob


    sons Nico and Noah run to Mom to help her celebrate her victory

    Meyers Taylor, 41, is the most decorated Black Winter Olympian

    three silver medals and two bronze medals in four previous Olympics

    Siobhan McGirl quotes Meyers Taylor in an article published yesterday in nbcphiladelphia.com

    “I really want a gold medal. I haven’t gotten it yet, so I feel like that is the one thing that I am missing from my resume, but besides that it is doing it for myself and doing it for my kids,” said Meyers Taylor. “To show them that I can chase my dreams and I can overcome obstacles and just continue to persevere through any obstacles that come my way and actually achieve my dreams.”

    Both Meyers Taylor’s sons, Nico and Noah, are deaf. Nico also has down syndrome.

    “I really want to show them that despite what people tell you… that you can go for it regardless,” said Meyers Taylor. “I also want to show them that it’s okay- you are going to falter at times, but you can learn a lot and you can continue to grow and you can fight through those hard times.”

    Congratulations to a black woman who endured obstacles, persevered through pain, defied the odds to represent not only her family but also her country.

    I don’t know nuthin’ about Women’s Monobob, but I was intrigued when I randomly watched awesome women flying around at warp speed in a tiny tube shaped like a hot dog bun this afternoon as part of the NBC coverage of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics. I quickly learned speed was the goal, but the driver’s skills were critical to the win. These women meant business.

    Only one could win the gold, however, and I was thrilled for this wise woman who understood the importance of staying the course.

    Elana Meyers Taylor made history during Black History Month – perfect timing.

    *******************

    (the images belong to NBC – courtesy of my Smart TV)

  • January 19, 2026 – Martin Luther King Jr. Day

    January 19, 2026 – Martin Luther King Jr. Day


    Hear ye, hear ye – all who have ears to hear, listen to the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail where he had been imprisoned for his participation in nonviolent protests. The year was 1963, and Dr. King wrote in longhand the letter which follows in his response to a public statement of concern and caution issued by eight white religious leaders of the South. Dr. King, who was born in 1929, did his undergraduate work at Morehouse College; attended the integrated Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, one of six black pupils among a hundred students, and the president of his class; he won a fellowship to Boston University for his Ph.D.

    “But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the
    outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation -and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

    We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the
    oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was “well timed” according to the timetable of
    those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait.” It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “never.”

    It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say “wait.”

    But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored
    people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable
    corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs
    reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you
    are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are
    harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to
    expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of
    “nobodyness” — then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs
    over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.”

    *******************

    What do we want? Justice. Equality. Life. Liberty. The Pursuit of Happiness.

    When do we want them? Now.

    We don’t have another 250 years of waiting in us.

  • Coach Dawn Staley: the stuff dreams are made of

    Coach Dawn Staley: the stuff dreams are made of


    My cell phone rang which interrupted pre-nap reveries, and I was happy to talk to my friend, Garner, who was one of my best basketball buddies ever. He invited me to go with him to the unveiling of the Dawn Staley Statue here in Columbia at 4 o’clock that afternoon. I couldn’t accept fast enough! The day was an unexpected treat.

    After lunch this past Wednesday, I settled into my large recliner for an afternoon of the Madrid Open tennis tournament, a tournament played on my favorite surface of red clay. I had fed Charly and Carl and looked forward to a helping of tennis mixed with my long afternoon snooze. Not so fast, my friend. The call from Garner changed that.

    the order of the unveiling

    my buddy Garner and me at the statue reveal

    Coach Staley’s words seemed to reveal more than the bronze statue behind her.

    “I agreed to the statue not for me, but for the girl who will walk by one day and wonder who I was,” Staley said. “Maybe she’ll look me up. She’ll see that I did some things in basketball of course, but I hope she sees much more.
    “I hope she sees that I was a champion for equity and equality. That, in my own way, I pushed for change. That I stood proudly in the space God called me to inhabit, not as someone perfect or extraordinary, but as a regular girl who used her gifts to open doors so other girls wouldn’t have to knock as hard.”

    Indeed, her statue stands as a symbol of resistance, resilience, and representation. Only 6 percent of statues in the United States depict women, according to UW-La Crosse art professor Sierra Rooney, and even fewer depict Black women. (Curtis Rowser III, BET News, May 01, 2025)

    Thanks, Coach, for three national championships, seven Final Fours, and nine SEC championships. We have been starved to have a top tier team at the University of South Carolina – you have put us on everyone’s radar now. More than that, thank you for what you give to this community, to your basketball “fams” and followers, to all who support you in your efforts to give a voice to the voiceless in an unwavering commitment to equality for all.

  • March Madness Away from Basketball

    March Madness Away from Basketball


    Although NCAA women’s basketball takes center court in our home during the month of March every year, Pretty and I also welcome an annual springtime celebration of Women’s History in March. Basketball bracketology should be discussed by experts, and neither Pretty nor I qualify. We were, however, both teachers at one point in our lives and did learn how to develop a lesson plan.

    My plan today features a civics lesson Americans have either forgotten and/or not been taught, so think of this as a brief refresher course that is not sanctioned by anyone and won’t require a registration fee. Hang on to your recliners, my friends. This is high drama. The United States government is structured with three separate but interdependent branches: the legislative (Congress), the executive (President and Cabinet), and the judicial (Supreme Court and federal courts), each with specific powers and responsibilities. Being a contrarian, let’s work backwards as we consider three women who have been leaders in each equal branch under the Constitution.

    Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s parents, Johnny and Ellery Brown, had a front row seat at their 51 year old daughter’s confirmation proceedings to be appointed the first Black woman to the United States Supreme Court during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s public hearings in April, 2022. Their faces remained noncommittal, even stoic, when their daughter’s faith, views on pornography, questions of character were attacked by the Republican Senators in the room.

    The confirmation hearings that began with President Joe Biden’s nomination of Judge Jackson had a zoo-like quality with the zookeeper a/k/a Chairman Dick Durbin doing his best to maintain order – decorum was out the window. Johnny and Ellery Brown had undoubtedly seen worse behavior as natives of Miami growing up in the Jim Crow South but as public school teachers in Washington, D.C., they had also seen the impact of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s which gave their children more opportunities for success. Judge Jackson was born on September 14, 1970, in Washington, D.C. She was confirmed to the Supreme Court by the Senate with a 53-47 vote on April 07, 2022, and was sworn in on June 30th. of that year.

    When Judge Jackson was 27 years old in 1997, a woman named Madeleine Albright, who then President Bill Clinton had nominated to become the first female Secretary of State, went through her own Senate confirmation hearings in an atmosphere much less combative than the circus Judge Jackson was forced to endure. Republican Senator Jesse Helms who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee led then United Nations Ambassador Albright through the process that ended in a unanimous Senate vote to confirm. Wow. Those were the days.

    Madeleine Albright was born on May 15, 1937, in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). In 1939 the Nazi occupation forced her family to become refugees in England, but they returned home after World War II; only to flee again when the communist coup occurred. Her father Josef Korbel had been a member of the Czechoslovakian diplomatic service and sentenced to death by the communist regime. The second time her family fled Madeleine and her mother Anna took a ship to Ellis Island in November, 1948; Josef joined them later. They eventually settled in Denver, Colorado, where Josef accepted a position at the University of Denver. These European immigrants had found a home.

    Madeleine Albright’s storied career represents to me the best of America. To be “the first” woman in any field, to be known as a woman who “tells it like it is,” to successfully navigate the political land mines of our nation’s Capitol to serve our country in an ever changing world – these are accomplishments we celebrate; but to achieve as an outsider, a refugee, merited our highest honors including the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed by President Barack Obama in 2012.

    Madeleine Albright died on March 23, 2022, following a long battle with cancer. The first woman ever called Madam Secretary of State left us as the first Black woman battled for her position on the Supreme Court in a contentious, even embarrassing at times, public hearing while her parents, husband, daughters, brother and the American people watched. The coincidental timing was remarkable to me.

    Nancy Pelosi was born on March 26, 1940, and served as the 52nd. Speaker of the House of Representatives, having made history in 2007 when she was elected the first woman to serve as Speaker.  She made history again in January, 2019, when she regained her position second-in-line to the presidency – the first person to do so in more than six decades.

    Pelosi was the chief architect of generation-defining legislation under two Democratic administrations, including the Affordable Care Act and the American Rescue Plan.  She led House Democrats for 20 years and previously served as House Democratic Whip.  In 2013, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Seneca Falls, the birthplace of the American women’s rights movement.  In 2024, she was awarded by President Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

    Pelosi has represented San Francisco in Congress for 37 years,  currently serving as Speaker Emerita of the House and as the Representative for California’s 11th. Congressional District, but it is one picture of her during Trump’s first presidential term that occupies a place of honor in my office as the recipient of the Sheila R. Morris Calling It Like She Sees It Award.

    Speaker Pelosi at a cabinet meeting during the first Trump administration

    I had a vision of hope for the future when I heard Judge Jackson’s answers to the questions posed three years ago during her confirmation process, a glimmer of hope for equality and fairness for my granddaughters. I felt that same spirit of hope in the legacy Madeleine Albright left, her persistence in pursuing freedom for all nations from the position of an immigrant in this country, the world peace she strived for. Jackson. Albright. Pelosi. I salute all three of these warrior women during Women’s History Month for their shared destiny of becoming a “first” in the judicial, executive, and legislative branches of government in the United States of America – three women who broke not only glass ceilings in government but also understood that real power belongs to those willing to serve for a greater good.

    Class dismissed.