Appearing on the FRANCE 24 Interview, Jesse Jackson, a prominent figure in the US civil rights movement from the days of his mentor Martin Luther King, Jr., explained the reason for his famously tear-streaked face as the news came in of Barack Obama’s presidential win in November 2008.

“So many people were martyred [in the civil rights movement] who couldn’t be there. Barack Obama ran the last lap of a 60-year race. He came out of our struggle. What made me tear up was thinking, if Dr. King could be here to see his work, what a joy there would be,” Jackson told FRANCE 24..

Jackson expressed his approval of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s appoitnment to the US Supreme Court, which took place on Saturday. “It is democratising democracy,” he said. “The Supreme Court should represent diversity. Not just with her ethnicity, but with her views on delicate issues.”

Jackson said that, although Americans had come a long way since the civil fights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, “there is still unfinished business.”

“Blacks are number one in tennis, basketball and the presidency, but we are also number one in infant mortality. We are free but not equal.”

Jackson was also outspoken about the recent race row involving black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, who met with US President Barack Obama and with James Crowley, the white sergeant who arrested Gates in front of his own house, at a meeting to calm things down at the White House on July 30.

“It’s a classic confrontation,” said Jackson. “Gates felt humiliated, and the policeman felt offended – because [Gates] didn’t respond quickly enough. Obama was right to bring up the question of racial profiling.”

Regarding the hot-button issue of affirmative action, Jackson said, “You have to have affirmative action to offset negative action,” explaining that it was the “only remedy” to all the preceding years during which the playing field was not level for all races.