LETTER THEEDITOR FROM
By DeWAYNE WICKHAM year , Jackson won 3.3 million votes – 18.2 percent of the ballots cast in the party ’ s primaries .
It was at a most improbable moment that a Black person in this country first received serious – though fleeting – consideration as a candidate for the presidency of the United States . It happened in 1848 , 17 years before slavery in the United States was ended .
That year , as members of the antislavery National Liberty Party met in Buffalo , New York , to pick a presidential candidate who might win them the White House , one delegate to that convention voted for Frederick Douglass , a runaway slave , to be the party ’ s presidential nominee .
Forty years later Douglass again received a single nominating vote . This time it came at the Republican Party ’ s 1888 convention , a gathering which ultimately chose as its nominee Benjamin Harrison , a former senator who went on to defeat Democrat Grover Cleveland , the incumbent president .
It wasn ’ t until nearly a century later , however , that Black presidential candidates began to catch the attention of the American electorate . In 1972 , U . S . Rep . Shirley Chisholm , D-New York , mounted a spirited , but unsuccessful , run for the Democratic Party ’ s presidential nomination .
Then in 1984 , the Rev . Jesse Jackson shocked the political establishment when he won five of the Democratic Party ’ s nominating contests . Those victories came in Louisiana , Virginia , South Carolina , Mississippi and the District of Columbia .
Four years later , Jackson did even better . He won primaries in Alabama , Georgia , Louisiana , Mississippi , Virginia , Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia – and caucuses in Delaware , Michigan , South Carolina and Vermont .
In all , he won 6.9 million votes and halfway through the Democratic Party primary process Jackson had the backing of the most delegates before ultimately being overtaken by Massachusetts Gov . Michael Dukakis .
While he lost back-to-back campaigns for the Democratic Party ’ s presidential nomination , Jesse Jackson is credited with registering millions of new voters – voters who helped transform American politics . They ushered in a significant growth in the number of Black elected officials at every level of government – including the 2008 election of Barack Obama , this nation ’ s first Black president .
Now as Kamala Harris , a Howard University graduate and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority member , makes her history making run for the White House the focus is again on a Black presidential candidate .
So , it is with all of this in mind that this issue of the Morgan Global Journalism Review puts a spotlight on the long history of Black involvement in this nation ’ s presidential campaigns .
It is a history that EVERY American should know . n
In his pursuit of the Democratic Party ’ s presidential nomination that
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