Most people have never heard of Keith Jackson. He’s Michael Jackson’s first cousin. His father, Martin Luther Jackson, was a brother of Joe Jackson, the man who managed the Jackson 5 and raised them in Gary, Indiana.
So Keith grew up close to the family. His dad even played in Joe’s early band, the Falcons, and taught a young Tito a few blues songs on the guitar.
Keith has told the story of one trip he says he’ll never forget.
He was about 11 when the family brought him along to Chicago to watch his cousins perform. The Jackson 5 had a show at the Regal Theatre, and Keith got to stay with the boys at their hotel. For a kid, it was the adventure of a lifetime. He remembers sitting outside on a car with Michael, just talking and joking around. Keith called him “Mike.”
Then came the moment that turned the whole night upside down.
Keith stepped outside the hotel one evening, still in his pajamas. He wasn’t famous. He wasn’t in the group. He was just a boy getting some air. But a crowd of fans was waiting out front, and when they saw him, something clicked in their heads.
They thought he was one of the Jackson 5.
The fans mobbed him. They grabbed at him and pressed in from every side, sure they had found one of the stars they came to see. Michael, his brother Marlon, and another cousin named Trent slipped back inside while the crowd closed around Keith. Security had to step in and pull him out of the middle of it.
“They thought I was a member of the Jackson 5,” Keith has said.
It’s a wild thing to happen to an 11-year-old in his pajamas, mobbed by strangers who were certain he was a pop star. That’s the kind of story a person carries for the rest of his life.
But the part Keith holds onto isn’t the crowd. It’s Michael.
Michael was about four years older, and he went out of his way to make his younger cousin feel special. One day he sat down and drew Keith a little cartoon picture and handed it over as a gift. Keith says Michael “drew a picture of me and gave it to me,” and he wishes he still had it to remember him by.
Years later the family came together again in California, and Keith got to watch the next generation take the stage. “Tito’s sons 3T performed and they were amazing,” he said, proud of the cousins coming up behind him.
It’s a side of the Jackson family that rarely gets told, straight from someone who was there in the room.
Have a look at the photos of the Jackson 5 in those early Chicago days, the family home on Jackson Street in Gary, and the group in the years when all of this happened.