How Jesse Jackson puts family first; exciting book digs behind the scenes to reveal how the Rev. Jesse Jackson turned the screws to put his sons in positions of influence and to launch a family dynasty

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 1, 2002 | by Kenneth R. Timmerman

All through the 1970s and the 1980s, the Rukn were the only business in town," Peters and Schneider said. "They controlled the South Side."

"The gangs were always present, always there, not part of the movement but on the movement's fringes," recalls Barbara Reynolds, now an ordained Baptist minister in the Washington area. While they engaged in "community organizing" and took government grants, they also engaged in drug running, extortion and murder.

"In the 1970s, the Rukn ... were taking antennas off of cars and making zip guns," recall prosecutors Peters and Schneider. "They used crossbows, single-bolt-action rifles, everything but automatic weapons, which weren't widely available then. But they killed a lot of people all the same. We proved more than a dozen murders at trial." More than 200 people died as a result of Rukn violence. "They had mis-hits," Peters says. "They followed the wrong car, killed the wrong person. They hit innocent bystanders all the time."

Such was the group Noah Robinson had sought to command. Such were the men Jesse Jackson believed deserved respect.

THIS ARTICLE IS EXCERPTED FROM CHAPTER 11 OF SHAKEDOWN! EXPOSING THE REAL JESSE JACKSON (REGINERY, $29.95, 512 PP) BY KENNETH R TIMMERMAN, A SENIOR WRITER FOR INSIGHT.