Since Barack Obama's election in 2008, much ink has been spilled debating if we have reached the end of Black politics. My answer to that question is an emphatic "no." Still, that got me thinking about which politicans have mattered most. Therefore, I ask, "Who are the five most important African American political figures of the last thirty years?"
Here are my top five:
1. Barack Obama
It is so obvious that if you have to ask….
2. Jesse Jackson
He was by Martin Luther King Jr.'s side on April 4, 1968, the day we lost the most important civil rights leader America ever knew. He parlayed his close relationship with King into a position as America's most important unelected African American leader of the last thirty years. His spirited, motivated runs for the presidency in 1984 and 1988 demonstrated that white voters would and could take African American candidates seriously. Although he did not win, Jackson demonstrated that the impossible was not so impossible.
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