Jesse jackson: ‘i have the ability and the will to fight’

Haynes was formally introduced as the new president during the Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s 57th annual conference in July. “I’m delighted in the Rev. Haynes’ stature and ability to take this

thing another step along the way,” Jackson says during the joint interview with Haynes, who called in from Dallas. “Rev. Jackson has been the direct mentor in teaching us,” the Rev. Al

Sharpton told AARP in a separate interview. “So as long as we are doing the work, his legacy is not limited to one organization or one person. His legacy is that he has planted the seeds

that have now grown.” Sharpton, 68, head of the National Action Network in New York, says the Saturday morning rallies he has been leading for 32 years are based on the Saturday morning

rallies Jackson started 50 years ago in Chicago. “When I walk in the studio of MSNBC, I think about how in the ’90s, Rev. Jackson had a show called _Both Sides_ on CNN. … When I walk into 30

Rock, that’s Rev. Jackson’s legacy,” Sharpton says. “So I learned and modeled a lot after him.” Just as aspects of Sharpton’s work are a result of Jackson’s efforts, Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH

Coalition is, in essence, a result of King’s. The nonprofit was formed upon the merger of two organizations Jackson founded: Operation PUSH (1971) and the National Rainbow Coalition (1984).

The initial organization, whose acronym stood for People United to Save Humanity (“save” later became “serve”), was the product of a social justice movement that grew out of the Southern

Christian Leadership Conference’s (SCLC) Operation Breadbasket. In 1966, King appointed Jackson to serve as the first director of the Chicago division of Operation Breadbasket. Jackson, who

was with King in Memphis when King was killed in 1968, became Operation Breadbasket’s national director in 1967. “When Dr. King gave his ‘mountaintop’ speech, but prior to the beautiful

prophetic poetry at the end, Dr. King literally laid out a map for economic justice, and no one picked up that baton any better than the Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson Sr.,” Haynes says. “Through

Operation Breadbasket and Operation PUSH, he fought for economic justice in a way that opened up doors of opportunity not only for Black businesses, but also for African Americans who

historically had been denied opportunity when it comes to corporate [America].” The March on Washington propelled King into the national spotlight as a gifted leader and orator. It also set

the stage for many of his protégés, including Jackson, says historian Yohuru Williams, the founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas, who co-authored

with Michael Long the upcoming book, _More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom_. “Some of the core issues that we see evidenced in the work of the Rev. Jesse

Jackson … were articulated at the March on Washington in 1963,” says Williams, who interviewed Jackson for a History Channel special,_ Jesse Jackson on MLK: One Bullet Couldn’t Kill the

Movement_.