Jackson Tells Gang Members They’re at Cutting Edge of Civil Rights Push

Rev. Jesse Jackson told members of street gangs at a national truce summit Sunday that they represent the “new frontier of the civil rights struggle.” But he left town before a hoped-for meeting of national black leaders.

NAACP Executive Director Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. and Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan both said Sunday that they would go forward with plans to meet over differences that have separated factions of the civil rights movement in the past. In a rare display of unity at a Washington forum last month, Jackson, Chavis, Farrakhan and Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, identified gang violence as an issue on which they could work together.

Jackson and other civil rights leaders addressed summit participants from 28 cities Sunday. He told the audience members that they “are on the cutting-edge issue of our day.” Jackson later said he could not attend a meeting with Farrakhan and Chavis because he had to speak in New York for the reelection campaign of Mayor David N. Dinkins.

About 2,500 people attended a later session in Farrakhan’s Mosque Maryam.

Elsewhere in Chicago, Rep. Mel Reynolds (D-Ill.) addressed an “anti-gang summit.”

Reynolds said he would like to see the gang summit produce apologies to society and a declaration that “gangbanging is not an acceptable lifestyle, gangs will no longer sell drugs and destroy lives, gangbanging is wrong, gangs will no longer kill people and will turn in those gang members who do kill, and gangs will no longer exist.”