Jesse Jackson enabled new generation to serve, says Brazile

The authors of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics” said that Rev. Jesse Jackson propelled their political careers in an interview that aired Thursday on “Rising.” 

“Rev. Jackson in our judgment helped to enable a new generation of African Americans to serve,” former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile, one of the book’s authors, told Hill.TV’s Jamal Simmons. 

“This was the civil rights movement deciding it was time to get involved in electoral politics, and Rev. Jackson was that vehicle for many of us to get involved,” she continued, referring to Jackson’s 1983 announcement that he would run for president. 

“It wasn’t that he just got us involved, we actually played at the level that our white counterparts played at so that when started working in mainstream politics, they could no longer use the excuse ‘I can’t find anyone because we had all been trained,” Minyon Moore, founder of Women Building for the Future, said. 

Moore and Brazile, along with former Democratic National Convention Committee  CEO Leah Daughtry and Democratic Pary veteran Yolanda Caraway, who call themselves “The Colored Girls,” teamed up to detail their friendship in politics in the book. 

The book discusses the four women’s experiences working behind the scenes in the political world on high profile campaigns for former Presidents Clinton and Obama, former Vice President Gore, Hillary Clinton, and Michael Dukakis. 

— Julia Manchester