Most of you remember Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the pastor thrust out in to the media during the historic presidential campaign of Barack Obama. Unfortunately, millions of Americans only know Wright from a few soundbites, as well as the incredibly biased news coverage presented by Fox News. This is unfortunate. Most people who know the history of Jeremiah Wright would realize that he is an outstanding scholar and has engaged in courageous activism for the last 40 years. He deserves every bit as much respect for his accomplishments as President Barack Obama. Wait, scratch that - Jeremiah Wright deserves MORE respect for his accomplishments than President Obama. I stand by that statement, since Wright was fighting for black folks when President Obama was in diapers.

When asked by the Washington Post how he feels about President Obama, Rev. Wright had this to say:

"It is unrealistic to think that one person can change the mess that this country has gotten into, but to pick on him is like picking on one of my kids, I have been knowing him for 20 years. I have not stopped loving him because of what the press did, and to see him beat up on because of things he is not responsible for is painful."

He also mentioned some things that the public has been unaware of, such as the fact that the lives of his family members were disrupted because of the controversy:

"The day I took Jamila to campus, Fox News was on the sidewalk taking my picture. My granddaughter got in to a fistfight at FAMU [Florida A&M University], because people only know the press narrative about Jeremiah Wright, The press didn't care what they did to my family. They ruined their senior year in high school. They were at the senior prom, the graduation, waiting on something to try to destroy Obama."

I know a little bit about what Jeremiah Wright went through with Fox News. During the election, Bill O'Reilly spent a week on his show trying to get me fired from Syracuse University. Every single day, he had one guest on after another to tell the world what a terrible person I am. This was without quoting me very much or intelligently explaining his contention with me. He'd just decided that I was a bad black man. The truth was that he was angry that our Your Black World Coalition had pushed to boycott his corporate sponsors, and apparently this upset him quite a bit. When you mess with someone's money, that's when they get crazy.

While I wasn't rattled by O'Reilly's obsession with me, many of my friends and colleagues were upset and affected. Our business school, at Syracuse University, received bomb threats, and thousands of e-mails were pouring in from people who decided they hated me before they ever had a chance to get to know me. A couple of years later, it cost me my position at Syracuse when my tenure was denied. At the end of the day, I don't regret a thing: Doing what is right will always have a consequence.

I encourage anyone who has anything negative to say about Jeremiah Wright to realize that you may have been fed your perception through a media that is trained to hate people like him. Dr. Wright is a committed freedom fighter and every bit as patriotic as any politician on Capitol Hill. In fact, he is probably more patriotic than the rest of us, because he has always been willing to die for his beliefs. Love it or hate it, I will always respect Rev. Jeremiah Wright.



Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.