Jesse Jackson’s outburst against Barack Obama has laid bare the jealousy felt by a generation of civil rights leaders towards the man who would be President. Leonard Doyle reports
Friday, 11 July 2008
EPA
Mr Jackson, who ran for the White House in 1984 and again in 1988, supports Mr Obama’s White House bid – at least in public
Ever since he loped on to the political stage in Chicago nearly 20 years ago, Barack Obama has had to contend with the jealousy of prominent black politicians. The Reverend Jesse Jackson seethed with resentment at the effortless way the younger man snatched the spotlight away from an earlier generation of black leaders whose roots lay in the civil rights movement.