When the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson stood on the rostrum at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, California, on July 17, 1984, he was in an unusual and historic position. He was only the second African American to become a serious candidate for the presidential nomination of a major American political party. Twelve years earlier, Representative Shirley Chisholm of New York had made a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Chisholm’s candidacy was mainly symbolic, but Jackson’s was highly substantive. He had run in all of the primaries and caucuses, and he had won sufficient support from voters to command influence in the party, even if his delegate total was far short of the number needed for the nomination. Jackson used his keynote address to insist that the Democratic Party had to be a stronger advocate for the needy and the neglected. “They have voted in record numbers,” he declared. “The Democratic Party must send them a signal that we care.” Jackson called his supporters the “rainbow coalition,” since they were diverse in background, ethnicity, and religion. Yet while Jackson had attracted enthusiastic support during his campaign, he had also aroused controversy because of his willingness to negotiate with hostile or adversarial foreign leaders and owing to his inflammatory remarks about American Jews. Jackson’s speech was the culmination of his candidacy, and it produced an electrifying response. Delegates in the convention center cheered and cried; listeners were moved by his powerful voice and emotional appeals. His message hardly satisfied all his critics, but his speech proved that African Americans had achieved a new level of prominence and power in presidential politics.