Jesse Jackson

During a visit to Zimbabwe in 1989, Jesse Jackson was walking down the dirt trail leading to Victoria Falls when a group of three African men hunkered in the shade of a scrubby tree stood up to point at him. One asked, “Is this... is this the great Reverend Jesse Jackson?” His fame was global. He popped up in the most unlikely places: negotiating the release of hostages in Lebanon, lobbying for earthquake relief in Armenia, criticizing factory conditions in Japan. A photo spread of his career would show him face-to-face with Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milošević. He hosted Saturday Night Live and appeared on Sesame Street, and he had a talk show on CNN that ran for eight years.

Anton Gunn was holding court at the South Carolina Democratic Convention this weekend, eager to regale journalists with tales of the vaunted Barack Obama primary campaign in 2008. Obama’s landslide victory in South Carolina over Hillary Clinton that year propelled him to indomitable front-runner status, and Gunn, per his own telling, was the very first person Obama hired in the state. 'The first time he landed in South Carolina, I picked him up in my car and I drove him to his first event,' Gunn said.