“It’s a shame that Furman decided to celebrate such a historical event with such a divisive individual such as Reverend Jackson. He’s been stirring up division for years through outlandish anti-Semitic, anti-white, and anti-conservative statements,” Lauren Cooley, a Furman student and protest organizer, said in a statement the student dissenters released. “It’s an even greater shame that Furman University officials attempted to stifle students’ free speech when they constantly preach about civil discourse, the marketplace of ideas, and a well-rounded liberal-arts education.”
Jesse Jackson went on an angry tirade at Furman University in South Carolina on Wednesday night, inveighing against America and conservatives as perpetrators of evil and hate. Invited to speak at “Keeping Hope Alive: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement,” an official university event where he was hailed as a champion for social justice and a “global peacemaker,” Jackson spent over an hour riling up the crowd with his remarks.
In a student recording of the event obtained by National Review Online from Campus Reform, the pastor and former Democratic presidential candidate repeatedly called the United States “the land of the free and home of genocide,” in reference to historical treatment of American Indians. His rant about that history included such seemingly disjointed comments as, “You got paid for the scalps of the red skins of the Indians . . . and that’s how we got the Washington Redskins football league.”
“We are, at our foundation, born in sin and shaped in iniquity,” Jackson said of Americans.
Turning his sights to political conservatives, Jackson told the audience that the tea-party movement was born from efforts to preserve slavery and that Republicans Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan were proponents of segregation.
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