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after all, a preacher, and these were his people—the devout black churchgoers who had been the first to raise the cry: “Run, Jesse, Run.” Handmade Jackson for President signs decorated the walls and hung from the church balcony. More than 1,000 people filled the church, which had no air-con- ditioning, on one of the hottest nights of the hottest summer in a half century. “I was born against the odds,” Jackson cried, sweat pouring from his face. “I grew up against the odds. I stand here against the odds. I am an odds breaker and a dream maker. I will never surrender.” The next morning, the Rainbow Express moved southward once more, sweeping past the brown fields of corn and soybeans stunted by the summer’s drought. At all times, several black Mercury sedans—the vehicles of the Secret Service agents assigned to protect Jackson—kept pace alongside the candidate’s bus. In Louisville and Nashville on Friday and in Chattanooga on Saturday, Jackson stopped for rallies at the way stations of his campaign, the black churches. At each, in words nearly identical to those he had spoken in Indianapolis, he defiantly expressed his aims. Frequently, the helicopters of local television stations hovered above the Rainbow Express, collecting shots of the caravan for evening news broadcasts. The missed phone call, and Jackson’s response to it, kept the spotlight trained on him, and he was doing nothing to lessen the tension between himself and Dukakis. At one point, he suggested that former president Jimmy Carter might mediate his dispute with the governor. Dukakis flatly rejected the idea. Early Saturday afternoon, July 16, the express pulled up alongside Interstate 75 in Calhoun, Georgia, for two passengers. One was Bert Lance, a beefy, freewheeling Georgianwho had briefly directed the federal budget during the Carter administration. Over the last few years, he had emerged as an unlikely but influential Jackson adviser. The other new passenger was Dan Rather, the high-strung, high-powered anchorman of CBS News.

C H A P T E R 1 : R A I N B Ow E x P R E S S

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