Ari Berman, The Nation
The Reverend Jesse Jackson, no stranger to Super Tuesday, praised yesterday’s contests as a historic day for the Democratic Party and the nation. “One of the amazing stories is the maturing of America from Selma to Super Tuesday, in just forty-three years,” Jackson said in an interview Wednesday afternoon. “Forty-three years ago blacks were being beaten for attempting to vote.”
In 1988, in the party’s first Super Tuesday contest, Jackson won Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia. As DeWayne Wickham reported in USA Today, Jackson also took 18 percent of the white vote in Connecticut and a quarter in California. At the time, the results were viewed as unprecedented for a black candidate. “It was a forecast of things to come,” Jackson says.
