“Without Jesse Jackson, there likely would have been no Barack Obama,” he said in an Instagram post describing Jackson’s trailblazing campaigns. “As a presidential candidate and President of Rainbow PUSH, Rev. Jackson helped set the nation’s moral tone.”
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who served as youth director of Operation Breadbasket as a teen, spoke of Jackson’s influence on other leaders and national organizations. In a statement, the National Action Network president called his mentor’s decision “the pivoting of one of the most productive, prophetic, and dominant figures in the struggle for social justice in American history.”
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