The battle for liberty and equality for African-Americans is one that's passed down from generation to generation and from one age of black leadership to the next. . Through history, the African-American leadership has had many excellent ladies and men who made an impact and made a difference for black folks in America. Jessie Jackson has arranged his attempts to continue the fight for civil rights in one of the most cutting edge affiliations in history that came to be called the Rainbow Coalition. This organization represented the dreams and goals of the Reverend Jackson, to be sure. But it also represents the shared efforts of black American citizens across the nation in modern times to keep the fantasy of Martin Luther King alive and moving forward. In truth, the Rainbow Coalition was the result of a sequence of efforts and movements that started with a relationship between Reverend Jackson and Dr King. It was Martin Luther King that asked Jessie Jackson to head up a movement called Operation Breadbasket, a project to find the commercial improvement of black communities across the land, especially in the inner town.

As these movements started to make a genuine difference in the lives of Afro-Americans in America, another step was the development of Operation PUSH which stood for Folks United to Save Humanity. It was from these different initiatives and the success they were realizing the Rainbow Coalition was birthed to find industrial opportunity in the business community and to help Fortune 5 hundred companies to hire minorities and to grow their participation in the nurture and the development of black community for the good of all races. The naming of the movement "The Rainbow Coalition" is vital to the vision Reverend Jackson had for the civil rights movement. He didn't see it as just black folk working for the betterment of the black community. Instead, provoked by Martin Luther King's dream about equality and society of all races, the coalition would really be a partnership of all minorities, the white community and other equality movements to find equal opportunity for all of America's voters.

The significant position that The Rainbow Coalition brought to the consciousness of the black community and to America was the theory that civil rights was not only a black issue. It stressed that all of America can't move foreword when part of the population is left at the back to flounder in poverty and without the advantages of a good education and job prospects.

The result is that the black pride that was built by key figures of black history like Mohammed Ali, Spike Lee and even more radical elements like Malcolm X and the Black Panthers could now be used to promote true equality in the society. In doing so, Jackson and other contemporary black leaders taught the Afro-American community not only might be but must insist on being totally black and absolutely American in their status in American culture.

Finally, the Rainbow Coalition emphasized that civil rights isn't just a political issue. The stress was on all sides of American life including business equality, social opportunity and even equal illustration in the media and entertainment humanities. To be actually represented as a very important part of American culture, black USA citizens must have equivalent prospects in all venues. This is the message for its time that Reverend Jackson and the Rainbow coalition has brought and continues to bring to the nation's stage. And it is a significant message that takes the good that was done in past civil rights movements in this country and brings recent with a new century.