Trevor Hughes

It ultimately led to the desegregation of the public libraries in their community.

But it is really one of the first places that he got his start in civic activism.

The two men came up very much at the same time.

They were peers.

And Jesse Jackson, after sort of leaving college, moved to Chicago to help run operations for Dr. King.

There was a protest organized.

They called it Operation Breadbasket.

But the two men were very much linked.

And when Dr. King was killed, Jesse Jackson really took up that mantle, was present all over this country as sort of this civil rights conscience of America.

You know, I think people started to realize that there was a very powerful constituency here.

Jesse Jackson worked to build this coalition.

His group was called the Rainbow Push Coalition.

And so he really helped lay the foundations for the modern Democratic Party, which is built in bringing together disparate groups of people who are perhaps less specifically identified with one kind of belief or one kind of worldview.

And so he really spoke to a broad variety of people who cared about civil rights, about racial justice, about economic justice, because that was a huge part of what he pushed for.

It's easy to forget because he has kind of fallen out of the public view over the last few years because of his long illness.

But Jesse Jackson was such a powerfully known name.

And so he actually was able to travel the world and release a number of hostages in Syria and then also in Cuba.

You know, he was not of the government, but he was in some ways of the American people.

And that apparently was very successful.

In a social media post, the president said something I didn't realize, which is that he had provided office space for Jackson's coalition in New York City for quite some time.