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July 1, 2009

Anonymous The Kokomo Tribune Wed Jul 01, 2009, 10:38 PM EDT

THE ISSUE: Michael Jackson

OUR VIEW: His music wasn’t bounded by race.

The Rev. Al Sharpton recently has been criticized for his defense of Michael Jackson.

“Michael Jackson made culture accept a person of color, way before Tiger Woods, way before Oprah Winfrey, way before Barack Obama,” Sharpton said Thursday, after the death of the pop icon was reported. “Michael did with music what they later did in sports and in politics, and in television.”

Some even suggested Sharpton had elevated Jackson to a historic figure in the civil rights movement. That’s a stretch. Jackson was born in 1958.

But some of us are old enough to remember when The Jackson 5 debuted in 1970 with their album, “ABC.” Michael Jackson was just 11 years old, the youngest of the group of brothers, yet he was their leader.

Central Indiana was much more racially segregated in 1970. “ABC” changed things.

Ask anyone between the ages of 45 and 50, black or white – if they didn’t have “ABC,” they knew someone who did.

And they wore out that album. The Jackson 5 was the first act to have its first four singles – “I Want You Back,” “ABC,” The Love You Save” and “I’ll Be There” – reach the top of the American charts.

Michael Jackson was reclusive and strange. He even told the world he had slept in the same room with young boys.

But in 1970, and again after the release of Jackson’s solo album “Thriller” in 1982, black kids and white kids listened to the same music – Michael Jackson’s music.

That’s extraordinary and worthy of note.

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