Book Review- A Dream Deferred: Jesse Jackson and the Fight for Black Political Power

Book Review: A Dream Deferred: Jesse Jackson and the Fight for Black Political Power

By Abby D. Phillip

In A Dream Deferred, CNN senior political correspondent Abby D. Phillip delivers a masterful chronicle of Reverend Jesse L. Jackson's political ascent and his transformative impact on American progressive politics. Her book reveals not just the story of a civil rights leader who dared to seek the presidency, but also an intellectual biography of a man whose educational journey shaped his vision for a more equitable America—and whose mentorship created a new generation of civil rights leaders.

Phillip's narrative brilliantly traces how Jackson's educational experiences—from his painful isolation at the University of Illinois to his political awakening at North Carolina A&T—forged the progressive ideology that would later animate both major political parties. Unlike the Ivy League-educated elite of the civil rights establishment, Jackson's path through A&T, a historically Black college and university (HBCU) not considered among "the top Black schools" at the time, gave him an outsider's perspective that would prove prophetic.

As Phillip documents, Jackson's time at A&T under the mentorship of President Samuel DeWitt Proctor transformed him from a disheartened transfer student into a revolutionary organizer. The university became his laboratory for direct action, where he led eat-ins, wade-ins, and mass protests that eventually desegregated Greensboro. More significantly, it was where Jackson absorbed the teachings of intellectual giants like Dr. Benjamin Mays, Dr. Howard Thurman, and Dr. Proctor—figures who, Jackson reflects, influenced him "to a greater degree than I did by the athletic heroes."

This educational foundation informed Jackson's later progressive platform, which Phillip argues presciently set the agenda for the modern Democratic Party. Jackson championed universal healthcare, Palestinian statehood, gender equity in political representation, and economic populism—positions that branded him a radical in the 1980s but have since become defining features of contemporary American politics. As Senator Bernie Sanders puts it in the book: "Jesse Jackson is one of the very most significant political leaders in this country in the last 100 years."

Phillip pays careful attention to how Jackson's commitment to educational access and equity ran throughout his political career. His advocacy for investments in higher education for minorities, his push for tuition-free quality education, and his work to unite parents, students, and teachers in common pursuit of educational excellence all emerged from his own transformative college experience. The book reveals how Jackson's Operation PUSH created a "political education division" that became a venue for Black celebrities and politicians to hold panels on civic engagement, essentially creating an alternative educational infrastructure for Black political empowerment.