My grandmother always said we would see a Black president in her lifetime. Not maybe. Not hopefully. She said it like it was already written. When I was a kid, she watched Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns with the kind of focus usually reserved for her 5 hour church services. We were in New Jersey, but she was rooting for Chicago. She clapped at the television. She repeated “Keep Hope Alive” like it was scripture and she was donating to a collection plate. To her, Jackson wasn’t just running for office. He was proof that the ceiling could crack.

In 1984 and 1988, she believed he could win. She believed it because she wanted to, but also because she saw something larger shifting. She even wore her Jackson t-shirts proudly as she cleaned the homes of rich white people. Jackson was on a national ballot. He was winning states. He was collecting delegates. For a generation raised on segregation and open hostility, that alone felt revolutionary.

But when Barack Obama rose to prominence decades later, my grandmother looked at the television with a different kind of certainty. Chicago was back on her radar. She admired Jackson. She rooted for him. But when Obama stepped onto the national stage, she said quietly, “That’s the one.”

She could feel the difference in tone. The timing. The coalition. The country.

There is no Barack Obama without Jesse Jackson first expanding what was politically imaginable. Jackson did not win the presidency in 1984 or 1988. That is the easy headline. The deeper truth is that he permanently altered the math and the mindset of national politics.

In 1984, when Jackson launched his first Democratic presidential campaign, many in the political establishment treated it as symbolic. A protest candidacy. A statement run. The assumption was that a Black man could rally Black voters but not build a viable national coalition. Jackson proved that assumption wrong.

By the time the primaries were over, he had won several contests and secured more than 3 million votes. He did not just make speeches. He accumulated delegates. That mattered. Delegate math is the backbone of presidential politics. It is how you translate enthusiasm into leverage. Jackson walked into the Democratic National Convention with hundreds of delegates, forcing the party to negotiate and recognize his coalition as more than ceremonial.

Then came 1988.

His second campaign was more organized, more strategic, and more disciplined. Jackson won 11 primaries and caucuses that year, including key states like Michigan and Virginia. He built a coalition that extended beyond Black voters. He courted labor unions, farmers struggling with debt, Latinos, Arab Americans, progressive whites, and young voters. He called it the Rainbow Coalition, and it was not branding. It was infrastructure.

He demonstrated that a Black candidate could compete in predominantly white states and win. He showed that coalition politics was not theoretical. It was executable.

The delegate math again told the story. Jackson finished second in the Democratic primary that year and walked into the convention with more than 1,000 delegates. That level of support forced party leaders to confront a reality they had long avoided: Black voters were not just a loyal base. They were a power center.

Just as important was the media framing.

In the early 1980s, major outlets often covered Jackson through a lens of skepticism. He was described as charismatic but divisive, inspiring but unrealistic. There were constant questions about “electability.” Could white voters support him? Was America ready?

Those same questions resurfaced decades later during Obama’s 2008 run. The difference is that by then, Jackson had already stress-tested them.

Obama did not have to prove that a Black candidate could win primaries in white-majority states. Jackson had already done that. He did not have to introduce the idea that Black political ambition could extend beyond mayoral offices or congressional districts. Jackson had already expanded the map.

Even Obama’s coalition strategy resembled Jackson’s framework. Young voters, multiracial alliances, grassroots fundraising, and a message that blended moral appeal with policy detail. The tone was different. The style was different. But the pathway had been cleared.

It is also worth acknowledging the generational tension. Jackson represented a more overtly preacher-driven cadence, steeped in the language of the Civil Rights Movement. Obama’s rhetoric was more technocratic, more measured. But the leap from the pulpit to the presidency did not start in 2008. It started in 1984 when Jackson insisted that he belonged on a national ballot.

Political history often credits the person who crosses the finish line. It forgets the ones who widened the road.

Jackson’s presidential bids were not symbolic exercises. They forced the Democratic Party to rethink delegate allocation, coalition strategy, and the role of Black voters in national campaigns. They reshaped how journalists discussed Black candidacies, even if that shift was uneven and reluctant.

So when we talk about firsts, we should talk about foundations too.

Obama’s victory in 2008 was historic. It was transformative. But it did not emerge from nowhere. It emerged from decades of agitation, organizing, vote counting, and imagination expanding.

Jackson did not become president. But he made it harder for anyone to say a Black man could not.