Dream Deferred

Jesse Jackson was a civil rights leader, activist and skilled politician, and one of the most influential figures in American political life in the twentieth century. His runs for the presidency changed the direction of the Democratic Party in ways still felt today. In A Dream Deferred, journalist Abby Phillip traces his life through conversations with Jackson himself, along with interviews with his inner circle, political peers, critics and historians.

The book concentrates on his campaigns of 1984 and, above all, 1988. Phillip shows how Jackson put together an unlikely coalition that demonstrated the strength of the Black vote and the pull of an inclusive, economically populist message. He drew support from working people in urban centers such as Chicago, students on college campuses, Black voters across the South, white farmers in rural areas and many others.

Phillip ties those campaigns to the earlier chapters of his story: his deep Southern roots, his time working under Martin Luther King, and his organizing of the SCLC's Operation Breadbasket in Chicago and beyond. The coalition he assembled, she argues, became the template for the modern Democratic Party, and national candidates from Obama to Biden to Harris have relied on it.

Written as a popular history, the book draws on Phillip's reporting and storytelling to offer a fresh look at an American figure, with attention to the people, the politics and the hope involved.