LITHONIA, Ga. — At a passionate discussion of the African American political agenda Saturday, few sparring partners better personified the fallout from the last election than the two preachers, Jackson and Jackson.
The first Jackson was the Rev. Jesse Jackson, liberal war horse, civil rights veteran and two-time candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, who delivered a stirring declamation on social justice.
The second -- and lesser-known -- was Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., a Democrat who supported President Bush in the last election. He announced the dawn of a new black agenda based on the Bible and emanating from megachurches.
"My concern is: Have we allowed one party to take the black agenda and hold it hostage at gunpoint to the issue of gay rights?" asked Jackson, senior pastor of Hope Christian Church in suburban Washington, D.C.
The role of socially conservative black pastors in politics was a recurrent theme at the sixth State of the Black Union, an annual event hosted by journalist and political commentator Tavis Smiley.
Smiley invited the panelists -- among them Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, civil rights leader Joseph Lowery and the Rev. Al Sharpton -- to consider what planks might appear in a "Contract With Black America on Moral Values," which could be used to hold politicians accountable.
"The next time you come calling on our vote, you come correct on the contract or you don't come at all," Smiley said at the event, held at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in suburban Atlanta.
A number of panelists proposed that the first challenge for African Americans should be turning their gaze inward. Motivational speaker George Fraser argued that, with the civil rights era over, black Americans stood to benefit more from financial well-being than political action.
Farrakhan drew explosive applause when he said that blacks should build unity within their own ranks and rid themselves of dependence on a white power structure.
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. But power won't concede anything if the demand is coming from a weak constituency that looks like it's lost its testicular fortitude," he said.
Jesse Jackson sounded familiar themes of the civil rights movement. He decried racial disparities in income and life expectancy, and cautioned that voting rights were in jeopardy. "We've already got an agenda," he said. "Martin Luther King left us with an agenda."
