By Leslie Wilson

As a fan and historian, I experienced a range of emotions at the death of Michael Jackson. The event led me to several conclusions. First, that in death, all of our great cross-over stars are returned to the soil with the issue of race dominating their celebrations. As Professor Melissa Lacewell-Harris suggests, they are born black and die black.

Second, that through the lens of race, we tend to look at events in different ways. While blacks forgave Jackson for his alleged crimes, whites continually praised him but did not let us forget what he had done.

And finally, that despite the title of “King of Pop,” we continually underestimate the impact of Jackson in an era of great artists. Jackson’s passing dwarfed those of Barry White, Isaac Hayes, Marvin Gaye, Rick James and James Brown, each an icon in his own right.

Thousands of people gathered to celebrate what would have been Michael Jackson's 51st birthday at a public party thrown by Spike Lee on Saturday, Aug. 29, in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. Photo by Sharon Toomer of Black and Brown News.

In considering Jackson’s impact on my life, I realized that he is one of the most influential people of the twentieth century. He was a phenomenal performer, but equally a philanthropist, civil rights activist, and generational role model.

He was born on August 29, 1958, when social integration was beginning to be seen as more than a forced experiment. By the time Jackson made his first major television appearance in1969, more than ten years had passed since the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the rendering of the Brown decision. The “Jackson era” consisted of more of Vietnam and Watergate than of civil rights.

While a child of a revolutionary era, when Jackson gave a black power salute, it was on the stage. Jackson watched the more political action from the sidelines. He was biding his time, waiting for his moment. When he decided to enter the fray, he found a new medium for social justice in the emerging media technologies. And when he mastered it, Jackson became a revolutionary in his own right.

The Jacksons were an illustration of the blending of “Good Times” and “The Jeffersons,” hit television shows featuring African-American family life. Joseph and Katherine Jackson and their children were participants in the struggles that characterized African-American life during the end of civil rights movement. Their migration from the heavily black industrial community of Gary, Indiana, to fame and fortune in Los Angeles mirrored the physical and economic movement of blacks from the less privileged to an aspiring middle class.

To make them more appealing to blacks and whites, Motown’s handlers pressed countless buttons. They refused to let the Jacksons play their own instruments in the studio and pen their own songs. They also tried to create a fairy tale love affair between Jermaine and Hazel, the daughter of Berry Gordy. They attempted to romanticize the boys and “sell” dates with them through magazines. And while white audiences fell in love with his precocious face and child-like innocence, blacks saw him as a representation of W.E.B. DuBois’ concept of duality, of two souls at war within one body.

He was a shrewd businessman who made millions outside of the industry. His dissemination of self-created rumors led the press to consider him crazy, but he profited from each orchestration of the news. He was also a generous philanthropist, whose contributions did not grab the same media attention as his personal quirks.

In life, Michael Jackson as musical hero is easy to recognize. However, in death, Michael Jackson as an activist and mirror of black culture might be the reason he should be considered an icon.

Happy Birthday Michael!

Leslie Wilson is a Professor of American and African-American History at Montclair State University in Montclair, N.J.