can forget that night in Grant Park November 2008, when President-elect Barack Obama gave his victory speech, having become the first black person ever elected to office in the audience watching was a tearful Jesse Jackson senior.

The civil rights leader turned politician had run for the office himself twice in the 80's.

Here's a bit of Jackson speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.

>> We cannot win.

common ground as a basis for survival and development change grow.

>> Now a new book details.

Those historic campaigns and Jackson's rise in politics.

It's called a dream deferred.

Jesse Jackson and the fight for black political power and it's written by CNN journalist and anchor Abby Phillip, Phillip, Welcome Chicago tonight.

Thank guys for having friends.

So Jackson ran for president 1984, 88.

But both times he was not able to secure the nomination as history tells in an interview that we did with him back in 2020, he recalled some of the changes that he pushed for within the Democratic Party.

>> And they don't fall for sure.

And some it a call.

3 million new also in So it's good for soul.

You have one month to go, although it is.

So are in the market that is the office and we changed to proportionality.

It President Barack and Hillary and the cause is under way.

On floor.

sure the issue Pennsylvania and Texas.

And then loser isn't legal.

now that he was giving when you from a strong second.

So we change rules.

>> So hear him say we democratize democracy.

How are some of the strategies that he used back then still reflected in today's politics?

I'm thinking about the importance of voter registration.

Yeah.

And Stacey Abrams.

>> Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, he really I took the lessons of the civil rights movement and moved into the next level.

You know, he was a student of that movement.

He was there with Dr King and in the 70's and the 80's.

What he was saying to voters of all stripes, but particularly to black voters is that they have untapped political power and he wanted them to use it.

And so when he went on that voter registration drive, called it the Southern crease aid.

He to all the southern states and he said to black voters, your vote is the difference between, you know, Ronald Reagan winning or losing a campaign 1980, for example.

And that was a powerful message and he registered millions of people to vote, helped the Democrats retake power in 1986. and really change the structure of the Democratic Party.

Now we know that voters of color comprise a big chunk of the Democratic Party.

Well, Jesse Jackson was a key to making that happen and wasn't just black voters.

He brought Arab-American voters into the process, Asian-American voters into the process, a Hispanic voters into the process and a lot of it had to do not just with the ballot that they cast in November, but also how the party factor them in the nominating process.

So when he was talking there in that clip about proportional allocation of delegates, that's basically to say that if you have a candidate like Barack Obama who is not an establishment candidate, who's outsider, they can still rack up delegates and still have a shot at the nomination.

And that is the reason that President Obama was able to win the Democratic nomination 2008.

And it's probably the reason that he's president today.

>> Did you always see this sort of through line from from Jesse Jackson's campaign to to the history that we already know is written.

Yeah, you know, I mean, >> always say I was born a few weeks after the 1988, campaign was over.

So this book is not a lecture.

a reminder.

It's a history lesson for me and people like me who grew up in the Obama era and beyond.

And you.

I think it's important to just ask the question what came before it.

And there was a lot that came before it and I don't think I and many other people realize to what extent Jesse Jackson paved the way, not just in the tactics of politics.

You know, the delegates in all of that stuff.

That sounds very wonky to a lot of people, but also in the message in the vision that he had of unity in a Democratic coalition of using all the different parts of the rainbow of America and putting them together in one political party.

He was largely responsible for that.

And frankly, in the 1980's.

No one realized that because it wasn't until Barack Obama became president.

But I think people started to realize, oh, wait, Jesse Jackson actually did something that lasted beyond those 2 campaigns.

Jesse Jackson, he's human just like the rest of right?

we know that he learned, of course, from Dr Martin Luther King Junior.

He was with him.

He was there with him in Memphis at the time.

>> Dr King's assassination.

But it was what happened afterward that caused a bit of a rift between him and other leaders of the movement at the time.

What was that?

You know, this is pivotal moment in his life story and >> that he was there in the courtyard the day that Dr King was killed.

But after he Dr King was declared dead.

He left Memphis and he went up to Chicago when he was wearing shirt that was covered in the blood of Dr King and he wore that shirt for days and he left the rest of Dr King's acolytes and advisors who were his peers in Memphis and they stayed there and they were angry.

some of this has been written about and they've talked about in the past.

But that rift was so deep and long-lasting for many of them because when he went to Chicago with that bloodied shirt on is on.

He went unheeded media.

He was on television.

He was making public appearances and many people in that orbit thought that it was self-serving.

And that's one of the things that he's really had to live with and had to explain.

And he's talked about it and I detail this in the book and he said that the reason that he did it was because he was young.

He was.

A little immature and he was angry.

You know, he was in his early 20's.

I think people forget how young he was at that time and he was he says he was very angry.

But some of those other people like Jose Williams.

They were angry too, because they felt like he was trying to step into Dr King's shoes before even been buried.

Even later on, though, he could be viewed as sort of opportunistic.

But he was very familiar with Never met a camera.

He didn't like necessarily not But, you know, he would have during the campaign he would a prayer service, you know, as home and invite the media to witnesses.

And I think his critics also thought him as sort opportunistic self-serving.

Yeah.

>> You know, he's never met a camera that he didn't okay, everybody that knows him knows that.

And I think that's a huge part of his personality was that he learned very early on.

threat is decades in public life to use the power of the media and in a way that was both a blessing and a curse.

He was so skilled at it better than perhaps anybody else of his generation.

But at the same time it made people think that that was only thing that mattered to him.

But there was, you know, a self-serving is the word the EU's.

But I think that's a word that a lot of people might used to describe his love of the cameras.

So it's 2 sides of the same coin.

I do sometimes I think, though, as I'm working on this book and as somebody who's covered politics in these recent years.

That skill of using the media is something that is essential to succeeding in politics today.

But it was looked at very differently in the 70's and the 80's when he was doing it.

And so in a way, he was a little bit ahead of his time and it did not worked his favor in that campaign at Let's talk about the media because journalism these days isn't doing so hot, Only 28% of Americans say they trust the media.

According to the latest Gallup poll, news deserts have hit a new high and that is research fresh out of a middle school of journalism at Northwestern today.

>> How do we regain that trust?

>> You know, we have to be more transparent in the media about what we do and how we do it.

I think that this is this lack of trust is also a lack of understanding.

You know, I've worked in print.

I worked in television.

And when I worked in print, people couldn't tell the difference between the news pages and the editorial pages.

Similarly now with the Internet, people can't tell the difference between opinion journalism and journalism.

That's not meant to be that.

And in television, I think people don't understand.

When we talk about sources, what does that even mean?

Why do we named I think that there on our end right there needs to be more transparency explaining to people what we do and how we do it.

And the fact that we're not saying that we don't make mistakes in this business.

But when we do it, try to correct them as quickly as possible and that the difference between trustworthy media and media that is not trustworthy is that is that lack of transparency.

So I think that there's work to be done there.

But I also think that we have to adapt to the way the people are consuming the news.

They are not doing it in traditional forms as much anymore.

And we need to go where people are and take the content to them.

There's a huge interest in a desire and news.

It's just that the medium and the message or not they're not sinking up and we need to do a better job of that.

>> You host CNN NEWSNIGHT on week nights in the debate on that show can get pretty spirit to yet.

You were raised by Trinidad and parents in the DC area.

One of 6 kids.

So how did that experience in the family dinner table conversation?

appears you come to our Thanksgiving dinner table.

you know, first of all, I will say that, you know, my parents are immigrants from Trinidad Tobago.

And if you know, I tried it in person.

They're very political.

>> They actually are very interested in politics very knowledgeable about politics.

So we always talked about current events.

We watched a lot of news coming up.

Listen to a lot of news.

And so first, that's the first part was just that that was always kind of part of the dinner table conversation.

But there's always a healthy debate in every family, every single person is different.

And when you have a big family, you really and appreciate the value of those different points of view.

And that's how I approach my job.

We have a table and its actually a six-person table.

I did.

That was not planned, but it's it's 5 guests and me and we sat there and every person has a different perspective.

And even while we have spirited to beat the point is let's all talk.

Let's all have it out.

Let's prep press each other's idea ideas.

And I think that is I think that's the spirit of democracy.

I wish there was more of that.

But we try to do it every night.

And we we are really committed to the different points of view.

We don't just have people who represent a narrow band of politics.

We want to represent wheel spanned a few points in this country.

Both Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama, of course, came out of Chicago.

We have a local pretty popular, a historian who says that everything came from Chicago nightmare that just happened Chicago.

I'll tell you pretty rich political history as well.

Of course.

>> How would you describe the role of Chicago in national polls?

Yeah, well, you know, if I talk about this in the book but held Washington's.

>> victory as mayor of Chicago really push this country into a new era.

That was actually the first test of black political power.

He was able to mobilize black voters in this city to elect a mayor, a black mayor as a major city mayor.

And that was a huge moment.

And that moment was also a signal to national Democrats about the power black voters.

So that was actually one of the key rationale is that Jesse Jackson news to run for president.

He wanted to send a message to the party leaders that what happened in Chicago could happen in the rest of the country.

So it really does all come back to this many ways and >> I mean, you could say so much about Chicago's role, but this is a major American City which control of the city was a massive signal to the rest of the country.

And in 1983, it was in the 1984, when Jesse Jackson ran for president.

He used Chicago as an example of