We need not ease back into the uncivilized era of fighting to be a superior race.

That is a contradiction in terms because there is but one race, the human race.

Jesse Jackson spent decades as a public figure turning his moral convictions into public action.

Jackson was a presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, a Democratic presidential candidate,

and one of the world's best known black activists. Following a lengthy

illness, Jesse Jackson died earlier this week on the morning of Tuesday, February 17th. He was 84 years old.

Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excert. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Friday, February 20th,

20, 26. For more on the life and legacy of the late Jesse Jackson, now joined by USA Today

National Correspondent Trevor Hughes. Trevor, thank you so much for joining me. Yeah, good to be here.

As you wrote, Trevor, Jesse Jackson was a towering civil rights icon.

His civil rights story really begins at a public library in Greenville, South Carolina.

Tell me about the Greenville Eight.

This is one of those stories that feels like it's from the ancient past, but it is not.

This was 1960.

Jesse Jackson was home from college. He was

studying divinity. And he needed a book from the library. Now, at the time, segregation was legal

under the Jim Crow laws. And the book he needed was in the white only library. He tried to borrow

it. They wouldn't let him, even though it was just steps away. They told him to come back, you know, maybe a week later and they would have it available. So with a few friends,

he did something audacious. They walked into the White Library, started reading books. They sat

down and read books. They weren't talking. They weren't hassling people. They just sat

and read. And it so

offended the community that these young men and women were arrested for violating the law. It ultimately

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