The ripple effects of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s vision of Black economic power
Having covered the Rev. Jesse Jackson for more than a half-century, I have an insider's understanding of why thousands of people lined up to wait patiently last week in Chicago to pay their final respects to the departed civil rights icon. Jackson knew when and how to defy power, but he also knew how to cajole the powerful to make room at the table for the excluded. Of all the memories I have gathered in the past 50 years, one stood out on this solemn occasion: Black Expo, an annual convention put on by Jackson's Operation Breadbasket for several years in the late 1960s and early 1970s ...