A More Perfect Union Advancing New American Rights

525 pages. Endnotes. Bibliography. Inscribed by the author, it reads: To Derrick, Donna Aujust & Alexander Humphries Best Wishes Jesse Jackson Jr". Jesse Louis Jackson Jr. (born March 11, 1965) is an American politician. He served as the U.S. representative from Illinois's 2nd congressional district from 1995 until his resignation in 2012. A member of the Democratic Party, he is the son of former presidential candidate Jesse Jackson and worked for his father in both the 1984 presidential campaign and his social justice, civil rights and political activism organization, Operation PUSH. He served as a national co-chairman of the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign. Jackson established a consistent liberal record on both social and fiscal issues, and he has co-authored books on civil rights and personal finance. Jackson was investigated for financial improprieties including misuse of campaign funds. Jackson resigned from Congress on November 21, 2012, citing mental and physical health problems, including bipolar disorder. In 2013, Jackson admitted to violating federal law by using campaign funds to make personal purchases. Jackson pleaded guilty on February 20, 2013. On August 14, 2013, he was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison. Jackson was released from prison on March 26, 2015. Frank E. Watkins has been working for Jesse Jackson, Jr. as his Press Secretary and Director of Communications after having worked for 27 years as Press Secretary and Political Director for Rev. Jesse Jackson. Watkins has edited a book of Rev. Jackson's speeches and public writings. A More Perfect Union: Advancing New American Rights or simply A More Perfect Union is non-fiction political analysis written by United States Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. in collaboration with Frank E. Watkins. Watkins is a political theorist, activist and was the press secretary to Jackson at the time. It was released in hardcover format on October 15, 2001 and in paperback format on April 25, 2008. The material for Jackson's book, his third, came from three trips he took in 1997-98 to American Civil War battlefields. Although Watkins is credited, the biographical content of the book is written as a first person narrative as if written solely by Jackson. The National Park Service has twenty-eight national Civil War historic sites. Jackson and White visited approximately twenty battlefields in August 1997, December 1997 and the spring of 1998. Jackson's wife, Sandi Jackson, participated in the third trip. The trips heightened a belief of Jackson's that race as it relates to African Americans has been the focal point of social and political existence in American history. Since Jackson is not the first to present such a realization, he presents a North-South schism lens through which to view the congressional politics of race. The book contains about 75 pages of biographical/autobiographical content which provide context for the subsequent political analysis. Reviews focus on the political analysis of race, economic issues, geographical divide, and states' rights as well as the constitutional amendments proposed in this book. From a Publishers Weekly article: After coauthoring the recent Legal Lynching with his father, Congressman Jackson takes the lead in this book written with his press secretary, laying out his moral and political vision. The first, autobiographical section serves as an introduction to his historical review of how race and states' rights have been intertwined both in theory and practice. Jackson sees "race as the lens through which to see all of American history," but economics and sectional politics are the substance. From colonial times to the present, Jackson stresses both the contradictions within Southern conservative ideology (such as Southern states-righters' insistence on federal fugitive slave laws) and its consistencies across time (small local government, low taxes, economic underdevelopment and opposition to providing broad economic op.…