Hope Requires Work

Celebrating Rev. Jesse Jackson

This week, I’m joining Turning A Moment Into A Movement with Jay Love as part of the Accountability Matters series, where we are taking time to honor the life and legacy of Rev. Jesse Jackson. For many of us, his words “Keep Hope Alive” were not just something we heard. They were something we carried.

Rev. Jesse Jackson helped carry the Civil Rights Movement forward in the years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was taken from us. He fought for voting rights, workers’ rights, economic justice, and for people who too often get pushed to the margins, including those who are incarcerated or living in poverty. He pushed systems to answer to the people.

And that word—accountability—is where this conversation meets us right now.

Because the truth is, the same issues Rev. Jackson was organizing around are still shaping our communities today. We are still navigating voter suppression. We are still fighting for access to healthcare and housing. We are still calling for transparency and responsibility from institutions that were never built with all of us in mind.

That is not just history. That is our present.

As the founder of the Elbert Williams Voting Corner, I carry a family legacy that reminds me daily what is at stake. My great-grand uncle, Elbert Williams, was killed in 1940 for organizing Black voters in Brownsville, Tennessee. His story is a reminder that the fight for accountability, especially around voting rights, has always come with risk. But it has also always come with responsibility.

Responsibility to show up.
Responsibility to speak.
Responsibility to act.

That is why this conversation matters.

We are also joined by Teesha Montague, a community leader right here in Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County whose work reflects what it looks like to stay rooted in community while building pathways for opportunity and connection. From her leadership in the African American Downtown Festival to her deep ties to public service through her family, Teesha brings a lived understanding of how local leadership shapes everyday life.

This episode is about legacy, but it is also about practice.

What does it mean to “keep hope alive” when hope requires work?
What does accountability look like in our neighborhoods, our local governments, and our daily choices?
And how do we move from moments of awareness into sustained movement?

At the Elbert Williams Voting Corner, we often say that protest is not the finish line. It is the doorway.

What we do after we walk through that doorway is what shapes the future.

So I hope you’ll join us for this conversation. Not just to listen, but to reflect on where you stand in this ongoing story. Because the call that Rev. Jesse Jackson answered is still being extended to us.

And the question remains:

How will we carry it forward?

Celebrating Rev. Jesse Jackson “Keep Hope Alive: Accountability Then and Now”