Jackson didn’t just pave the way for Barack Obama. He envisioned a Democratic coalition and a policy agenda that were ahead ...

It has been one of the greatest honors of my life to spend as much time as possible with the Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson Sr.

When the Rev. Jesse Jackson announced his second presidential bid in 1988 in Pittsburgh, he saw the campaign as a chance for ...

I last connected with Jesse Jackson at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where former Vice President Kamala Harris accepted her party’s nomination. By then, Jackson, who died Tuesday ...

In 1988, the power brokers of the Democratic Party watched a Chicago civil rights leader, a maverick with a movement he ...

In 2000, I got to spend some intense hours with Jesse Jackson, when he and his son Jesse Jackson Jr., then in Congress, collaborated with me on a book about capital punishment. Commitments across the ...

The lasting lesson of Jesse Jackson's 1988 campaign, explained.

The late Jesse Jackson twice sought the Democratic nomination for president – and though he fell short in 1984 and 1988, his insurgent campaigns reshaped American politics and laid the groundwork for ...

Both men sought the presidency. They came from different backgrounds, held different goals, and had radically different ...

Danielle Wiggins, a historian at Georgetown University, says Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 campaigns used rhetoric, tactics, and policy that would greatly benefit Democrats today.

Jesse Jackson’s two campaigns for president, in 1984 and 1988, were unsuccessful but historic. The civil rights activist and organizer, who died on Feb. 17, 2026, helped pave the way for Barack ...