He never received the nomination for President, but he ran twice in 1984 and 1988 with his signature call and response. “I am somebody,” and “keep hope alive.”
Watch this 1971 clip of Rev. Jesse Jackson and the kids of Sesame Street on PBS. It’s a wonderful demonstration of positive self talk and affirmation using the call and response. Repeating positive affirmations undoes negative self-talk and activates the hippocampus so that learning happens.
So repeating phrases like this over and again in church and elsewhere doesn’t just feel good—it actually rewires the brain. Neuroscience and positive psychology backs this up. When we speak kindly to ourselves and affirm our worth, our brains get to work creating new, healthier neural pathways.
It turns out that the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory and emotional regulation, lights up when we practice affirmations. This isn’t just theory—fMRI studies have shown that affirmations activate brain regions linked to reward and self-processing, especially the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex. These areas work closely with the hippocampus to help us lock in those affirming messages.
This is neuroplasticity in real time. When we shift how we speak to ourselves, we literally shift our brain’s wiring. We’re not just “being positive”—we’re building resilience, strengthening our focus, and reshaping how we experience the world.
A 2016 study found that people who practiced self-affirmation showed more activity in both the hippocampus and the brain’s reward centers—which means the brain not only registers positive self-talk, it rewards it. That reward response helps reinforce the behavior, making it easier to keep going, even when the odds are stacked against you.
I first met Rev. Jackson at my home church, Good Street Baptist Church in Dallas, long before his first run, when I was about the age of some of the older kids in this clip and long before I’d manage media for him at the age of 32 at the Congressional Black Caucus in DC in the early 2000s.
It’s safe to say, Shirley Chisholm walked so he could run, and he ran so Obama, and anyone after him, could cross the finish line.
Jackson was an organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in the 1960s and was a close aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and present at the time of the civil rights icon’s 1968 fatal shooting.
Jackson, like Shirley Chisholm, President Obama and Kamala Harris, the other three Black presidential candidates have a couple things in common: the first, strong ties with the Black Church. They also engaged call and response in their speeches.
I examine how they were impacted by the Black Church, and the common thread that connects them in their leadership as a result of those ties in my forthcoming book Call & Response: 10 Leadership Lessons from the Black Church (Amistad Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishing/ JVL Media, 2026).
The last time I saw Rev. Jackson was on a work trip, at an awards dinner in NYC. I said, “You don’t remember me, do you?” And he looked me dead in my eyes, despite failing health and memory, smiled and said, “Good Street!”
Happy Sunday!
Video courtesy• @rbreich on IG
Source: Falk et al., Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2015
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