Up, Down and Around With Jesse Jackson

Jesse Jackson’s campaign in Española, New Mexico, in 1988. Photo courtesy of Carol Miller.

Jesse Jackson’s two runs, in 1984 and 1988, were the last Democratic presidential campaigns I had any interest in joining. Those campaigns, which, among other things, warned about the coming neoliberal takeover of the Democratic Party, spawned dozens of great activists, including my late buddy Kevin Alexander Gray, who would later play vital roles in the movements that followed Jackson’s political campaign...