Jackson done in by his own jealousy

Jesse is jealous of Barack.

Underlying Rev. Jesse Jackson's disparaging, vulgar and even sadistic remarks aimed at presumptive Democratic Party presidential candidate, Barack Obama, is Jesse's profound jealousy over a nomination he sought in two respectable runs for president in 1984 and 1988.

But this nation was not yet ready for a serious presidential candidate who happened to be African American.

Ironically, Jesse got his start from the jealousy of black pastors.

When Martin Luther King Jr. came to Chicago in 1966, uniting his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with Al Raby's Co-ordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO) to form the Chicago Freedom Movement, he called together the pastors of predominantly black congregations, myself included, and organized us into what became SCLC -- Operation Breadbasket.

When Dr. King asked for a pastor to step forward to head the new project, he was surprised to hear several quick refusals.

"No, Dr. King, you must lead this project."

No pastor wanted another to be elevated above him or her.

Key to this mood was the fact that in those days, no blacks were in the board rooms or in other seats of power, and the lone channel for black leadership was the church.

Thus, the enormous pressure and competition among black clergy for the few leadership posts available to blacks in America.

Dr. King had to find someone outside the clergy ranks and he chose a young charismatic Chicago Theological Seminary student, Jesse Jackson, to co-ordinate the new project.

Jesse was hardly known to the pastors and was not seen as a threat to their positions.

And so it was Operation Breadbasket which launched Jesse onto the national scene.

In those exhilarating and successful Breadbasket days, Jesse became a hero to many, including me.

Now, sadly, just as Jesse Jackson benefited from the jealousy of Chicago's black pastors, he faces his own demise as a civil rights leader because of the same demon of jealousy, this time his own.

Rev. Martin Deppe

Retired pastor

Operation Breadbasket Steering Committee,

1966-1971

Chicago