The Rainbow Challenge

First published in 1986, Sheila Collins’s eyewitness account of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition remains a crucial document on the future of multiracial politics and ultimately of democracy in the United States. Collins, a field organizer and national officer during the Jackson campaign, examined the movement in detail, drawing on her own experiences and observations, as well as interviews with people around the country who have worked in the Rainbow Coalition. She pays particular attention to the class and ideological struggles within it—struggles not only between party Democrats and grassroots activists, but between alternative visions of black nationalism and multiracial politics. In a new preface, Collins reflects on the lessons and inspiration of her experience forty years later and on the continued challenge to keep Jackson’s vision alive. “A comprehensive study of Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign. This concise and well-written work is a fine example of politically engaged scholarship. A blueprint for future democratic struggles.”—Manning Marable (1950–2011), author, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention “Offers important insights into the need for effective coalition building to transform the substance of American politics—politics that will deal with the issues rather than personalities; politics that will broaden the participatory process rather than restrict it.” —Congressman Ronald Dellums (1935–2018) “An insider’s view of the project, practice, and problems of the Rainbow Coalition, in sharp contrast to the fashionable ivory-tower treatments of the Jackson campaign far removed from the heat of battle.”—Cornel West