Jesse : The Life And Pilgrimage Of Jesse Jackson

Raised in the segregated South, out of abject beginnings in South Carolina poverty and illegitimacy, heir apparent to Martin Luther King, Jr., twice a presidential candidate, recognized on the streets of South Central L.A., Ghana, Armenia, and Damascus, Jesse Jackson is a figure unique not only in American politics, but in American history. As James Baldwin noted during Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign, “His presence presents the American Republic with questions and choices it has spent all its history until this hour trying to avoid…And nothing will ever again be what it was before.”

Marshall Frady has been given closer access to Jackson and his family for a more sustained period of time than any previous writer. He has traveled with Jackson in the U.S., Africa, Russia, and the Middle East, and has conducted countless interviews with his colleagues and rivals of the last thirty years. The result is the most astute and compelling portrait of the man we are ever likely to have. Jesse is an enthralling journey that reveals the nonstop demands of character and sets them against the fundamental, dividing prism of race in America.