Brian Laird on W.N.C. last week on the show we did a Black History Month segment appropriate for this presidential

election year.

We looked back on the first campaign of an African American for the nomination for president from a major US political party.

It was Shirley Chisholm's campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1972.

Today we look back to what we might consider the next major chapter in that story,

Reverend Jesse Jackson's campaigns for the Democratic nomination in 1984 and 1988,

which got much further than Congresswoman Chisms did.

In fact, in that 1988 campaign, Reverend Jackson came in second in the number of delegates

earned in the Democratic primaries.

That means he got more delegates than Al Gore, who also ran that year.

And it means he got more delegates than Joe Biden, who also ran that year.

In 84, Jackson had come in third behind Walter Mondale and

Gary Hart but still won hundreds of delegates and a speaking slot at the

Democratic Convention.

This is not a perfect party.

We are not the perfect people.

Yet we are called to a perfect mission.

Our mission to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house, the homeless,

to teach the illiterate, to provide jobs for the jobless, and to choose the human race

over the nuclear race.

Reverend Jesse Jackson at the 1984 Democratic National Convention.

We'll hear at least one more clip as we go.

...