Jackson: Obama win ‘watermark moment’

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a leading figure in the U.S. civil rights movement for decades, compared the significance of Sen. Barack Obama capturing the Democratic presidential nomination with such seminal American events as the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that abolished slavery and the accomplishments of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“This is one of those watermark moments in history,” Mr. Jackson told The Washington Times today in Tanzania, where he was attending an African-American relations conference. “This is a young man who has apparently won the nomination that is a product of two continents. This is a huge moment in American and world history.”

Mr. Jackson, a former Democratic presidential candidate, added that the nomination of a black man for president is a “tremendous growth and maturity our our democracy.”