On January 15, 1975, the Reverend Jesse Jackson was leading a
demonstration around the White House to protest the lack of jobs for
black youths. As the demonstrators marched, Jackson was shocked to
discover that many of the black youths marching with him were drunk
or on drugs, many of them
out of control.
Abruptly, he called a halt
to the demonstration and sent the marchers home.
Within a few months, Jackson launched a national campaign in the
urban high schools of the nation to save the black youths of his country,
to get them off drugs and motivate them to work hard, study in school,
develop self-discipline, and become successful in American society. A
program called PUSH for Excellence, or PUSH/Excel, was an outgrowth
of his Operation PUSH organization. Society had no solutions for the
black teenagers whom Jackson was trying to help, and his efforts were
highly praised, at first, by the media and government officials.