Jesse Jackson.
“Alton Sterling Funeral Sermon.”
At this time, uh, would you receive, uh, the Reverend Jesse Jackson to give Expressions right now? Thank you.
Jesse Jackson
[Music] Say
“Stop the violence!
“Stop the violence!
“Save the children!
“Stop the violence!
“Save the children!
“Stop the guns!
“Stop the violence!
“Save the nation!
“Stop the violence!
“Save the nation!
“Never surrender!
“Keep hope… alive!
“Keep hope… alive!”
For the innocent blood of Alton, on your feet! Let me hear you scream for Alton today! Let me hear you scream… for Alton! [Congregation shouts.] Let me hear you scream.
[Congregation shouts.]
For the joy, let me hear you scream. For his love.
Let us pray —
For the lives lost in France last night,
For the mother from Baton Rouge,
Innocent blood lifts us today,
With the bloodshed in Minneapolis,
In Texas,
And the bloodshed everywhere by the innocent.
Give us the strength,
Strength to carry on,
Forgive us for our sins,
And the foolishness of our ways.
Make us better
And never bitter.
Lift us past the limitations of our present state.
Turn this period of racial violence
Into hope and new opportunity.
Bless our nation.
Bless our President.
Bless those who care enough to risk.
Bless this family.
Be the company keeper.
As you promised you would be.
We’ll do our best but that’s not enough.
But your Grace.
Your Grace.
Your Grace.
Your grace is sufficient,
Amen.
Dr King and and Medgar Evers and Emmett Till welcome Alton to the family of martyrs today.
You, Bishop, will the ministers of the Gospel, ministers please stand, ministers please stand, ministers please stand, wherever you are. Elected officials, stand wherever you are. Give them a big hand will you, please!
Thank you.
I want to begin by thanking the family of Alon Sterling for inviting me here today. For the call, Sister Sandra, to invite me to be a part of this service. To the siblings, the five children, to Cameron, and Quincy, Alton, Jr., Josiah, and Journee.
Thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken it: heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh. [Psalm 60:2] Heal the breaches.
The three sites of crucifixion last week, where pain abounded but hope must abound even more. The wounds in Minneapolis and Dallas are etched deep into our consciousness. After painful crucifixions, we must now live in the resurrection with new hope and possibilities.
But as painful as the crucifixions were, the resurrection must be transformative. The best can be ahead of us. This is a transformative moment. We must choose reconciliation over retaliation and revenge. The spirit of resurrection belongs to all of us. We must live in that spirit. Let’s heal the breach. Our families have been torn. Our body politic has been frayed and breached. Just as perfect love casts out fear, perfect [garbled] fear and hate, and hate leads to violence We must heal that breach, remove the stitches, remove the germs, and we all want healing we all want healing, but we must get the glass out of the wound.
We cannot merely have conversations about the wound; we must invest in the emergency room to heal the brokenness, and to even the life options of all of God’s children. It will cost to heal the wounds, but we cannot coexist with gangrene in the wound on the scab over it — we must heal the breach. Bodies are crippled and hearts are broken. Jesus said, “I’ve come to heal the brokenhearted.”
Sister Sandra said, “Reverend some things are getting out of hand. Please speak to us.” To those of you who are listening here and around the world, our strongest weapon is not guns and violence — it is the rightness of our cause. Unearned suffering is redemptive. There’s power in innocent blood. If the killing of Alton Sterling had been in a shootout or drug bust or robbery, we would not be here today. I say if the killing of Alton had been in a shootout a drug bust or robbery, we would not be here today.
We must not cede the moral high ground for violence. We must heal the breach. Dr King’s mission statement was redeem the soul of America; make America well and and the world better. If your neighbor’s house is on fire for all the wrong reasons, seek no comfort in your righteousness, because the wind is blowing. None of us are safe until all of us are safe. None of us are secure until all of us are secure. In the dark, we all look amazingly similar in the dark — black and white alike.
We don’t merely need conversation; we need correction and justice and development. Whether [garbled] it’s Sidney Williams from Southern going to the pros, or Willie Davis and Doug Williams from Grambling going to the pros, how did they make it? What do we want? It’s Southern and Grambling today, and what do we want? Why do we achieve so well on the football field? Why are we the best at that which is so hard to do? Because whenever the playing field is even, and the rule is public, and the goal is clear, the referee is fair, we can make it. We just want an even playing field.
Our Nation was built on a moral fault of race and gender supremacy. Unless the Lord build a house, they labor in vain [Psalm 127:1]. On this awkward moral fault, black and white today in Louisiana and across the Nation, we have survived apart. We may have a more difficult lesson now. We must learn to live together. I say, we have survived apart. We’ve survived apart; now we must learn a more difficult thing; learn to live together. Racism and arrogance of power are foreign to God’s purpose.
The question was asked one day, Cameron, “Who then is my neighbor?” And Jesus answered in a parable that has such meaning to us today. He said that a man was walking down the street one day, attending to his business. Maybe he was selling CDs for all we know, attending to his business, and two thieves came from around a blind spot and beat him and left him to die. And while laying on the ground, dying, he got a relief. He saw a minister coming, a man of his own religion. But the reverend went to the other side of the street, prayer book in one hand, Bible in the other, looking heavenly, going to hell, walking past a bleeding man a man of his own religion. His Baptist neighbor, he walked past him too. But another man from another country, who worshiped God differently, who spoke another language, he helped him up [yeah] It does not matter that you know, it matters that you care.
I watched today a a Muslim Minister making a shout like he was a Pent[ecostal] You — this negro is a Muslim. You know he was shouting. Give him another hand. Y’all do understand. Y’all was shouting now. Just say you understand. That’s right.
You must choose bridges over walls. Walls divide; bridges connect. If you plant two seeds in the ground of equal strength, you put a wall between them, and you water both, one will grow taller and have multiples of fruit one will be stunted will not grow. But the taller one is not better, and the smaller one is not less, Cameron. It’s that the one that had the sunshine, had the growth, and it has something called photosynthesis. When you pull the walls out, we can all have the sunshine.
Your dad was in the shadows as a living man that we put it. Say, we cannot we cannot canot raise the dead and bury the living. We cannot love Alton as a model, and not embrace him as a martyr. We apologize, Alton, we could have done better when you were alive. Character is measured by how you treat the least of these, not by what you consume. About what you share. The beaten man was not the hero. The Samaritan was the hero.
Racism has skewed our vision, and that’s why we need more white brothers and sisters here today, including white police, because then we’re all in the same family. You know and I know, if if whites kill blacks, it’s Rebellion time; if blacks kill whites, it’s jail time; if blacks and blacks if blacks kill blacks and whites kill whites, it’s Miller time. We must stop all the killing all the time everywhere.
We must take the issue of killing to ethical level, not just ethnic. No one has the right to kill anyone. We must not give up on God. The young man who died, who who killed the people in Texas, did not come out of the spirit of the Black Lives Movement. The young man who killed the police in Texas — should not have done it — was not trained by Black Lives Matter. He came out of the military. He didn’t volunteer for Black Lives Matter; he volunteered for the military and served two tours of duty in Afghan[istan]. The military taught him how to shoot; they taught them how to buy weapons. He came back home, and, and, and, you can buy the same weapons he used in Afghanistan on the street, and walk around with them on your shoulder. You mean that people in their right mind will make a weapon available that can shoot up churches and theaters and planes? Guns that can shoot down planes? Is not this death of Alton, is not the death of those police a wake up call? Can we not have a sense of making sense in our lives?
This young man, man that did the killing in Texas was product of our sickness. His ambition was to be a soldier. Apparently in this post-traumatic syndrome, he couldn’t identify himself or his neighbor. We don’t like to see what we see, as Michael Jackson, like the man in the mirror. The blood flowing in our streets is so devastating it makes strong men and women cry; it mobilizes a nation. Three acts, three acts of violence did what 10,000 sermons could not do — make us look at the mirror and we don’t like what we see.
In our strongest moment, we ask God for forgiveness with a contrite heart, and we seek Redemption. And our weakest moment, we we think that weapons and more powerful weapons and clips make us stronger. In that scenario, we are trapped in fields without love. Police are afraid. Families afraid. Children afraid. We cannot go forward by fear — we must go forward by hope. God speaks to us today from the grave.
I close on this note. Some years ago, say. God can speak to us speak from the grave. I asked Rosa Parks one day, “Bishop, why didn’t you go to the back of the bus? You could have been beaten, thrown off the bus, and driven over. Why didn’t you go to the back of the bus?” She said, “It was December 1st, and Emmett Till was killed August 28th. I, I, I thought about Emmett Till, and I couldn’t go back.” Emmett Till was speaking from the grave.
Dr. King came out of that struggle, a voice that came from the grave. That the King was assassinated in Memphis — the blood on that balcony in ’68 — put us in the White House in 2008. Speaking from the grave.
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
“No, you are your brother’s brother.”
“You’re your sister’s sister.”
Sterling and Castile and the Dallas Police spoke from the grave in such tones that the president, the Congress, and the whole world had to stop and reassess voices coming from the grave.
They couldn’t hear voices coming from the Congress. Democrats tried to talk, they shut the House down. They can, they can’t hear voices from living; they had to hear from the grave.
What is the grave saying to us?
Many
Guns!”
So dear God, today with contrite hearts, we say thank you Alton for using your miraculous power to take a crooked stick and hit a straight lick. We thank you today, thank you for his blood. He didn’t go to the great University, but in the end of the day, people do not care that you know — they must know that you care. And he cared, and we’re here today because he cared.
Don’t let them break your spirit. It gets dark sometime, but the morning cometh. The Lord is our light and our salvation — whom shall we fear? It gets dangerous sometime. Yea though I walk through valleys in Shadow of Death, I feel thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Don’t let them break your spirit. It gets dark, but the morning cometh.
I know you’re crying today, Sandra, but weeping may endure a day or two, but joy cometh in the morning. “And if my people, who are called by my name, humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and then turn, I said, turn from the wicked way — God will forgive their sins. God will hear from heaven and heal the land” [2 Chronicles 7:14].
Text prepared by:
- Bruce R. Magee
Source
Jackson, Jesse. “Alton Sterling Funeral Sermon.” YouTube, uploaded by The Root, 15 July 2016, www.youtube.com/ watch?v=XwaokSNl-4M. Accessed 30 March 2026.