Jesse Jackson Transfixes Law Forum

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Mayor of Resurrection City, transformed a session of the Harvard Law School Forum into an evangelical meeting last night as he preached against "the injustice of releasing black men into capitalism without the necessary capital to survive."

The flamboyant minister, a new leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, held the intense audience of 200 spellbound as his booming voice filled Lecture Hall with the history of the black race's suffering in America.

"Although black economic power is a prerequisite for racial integration--even if every black man was as well off materially as every white--America would still be sick" Jackson said. "The tragedy is that blacks have been perverted into merely the shadows of whites."

He called for America to bring forth a new generation of men to cure the nation's racism, which he called "the worst in the world."

"Harvard must turn out better products than its standardized competent hustlers," Jackson stated. He told the Law School Forum that "lawyers should stop seeking judgeships and worry more about the distribution of justice."

Roaring at the audience, he said that black men must define themselves in terms other than color. "In the future a black man should be recognized as black not because of his skin but because of his constructive acts," Jackson explained. "We must take away the white man's guns and make them into tools."

The minister stated that black people must exercise their power as consumers in order to create an identity for themselves. He cited the success of his efforts to force the 40 A & P stores in Chicago's black neighborhoods to hire black managers and invest their profit in black banks as proof that blacks could gain tangible advantages from consumer boycott tactics.

"The white community is constantly siphoning money out of the black ghetto, but rarely reinvests it there" Jackson said. "Blacks must reverse this cycle, we must break the grip of the vise that is killing us."

"To other ethnic groups, who have not had the double stigma of color and slavery, the Statue of Liberty has been a mother," he said.

"To the black man the Statue of Liberty is nothing but a bitch, a symbol of broken promises.