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

The picture showed Black Stone Rangers leader Jeff Fort and his sidekick, Mickey Cogwell, seated in the throne room of the "Fort" at 39th and E. Drexel Blvd. At their feet, facing the camera, was Jesse Jackson.

The sparse news accounts of the event didn't mention the photograph, which was hidden from the press gallery, but the reporters couldn't fail to detect Jackson's mood. Jackson was "admittedly nervous" as he described how he and his half-brother had worked closely with the gangs in the late 1960s. He said he had spent "considerable time" with Jeff Fort. "As a matter of fact, I baptized him during that same period," he offered. Noah's defense lawyers had been hoping Jackson would deploy his eloquence, to demonstrate the innocence of Noah's gang connections. Instead, Jackson focused solely on the events on 1968-69, when Jeff Fort was engaged with Jackson as a "community organizer," and said he had no knowledge of Noah's activities once Jackson had left Breadbasket to start Operation PUSH in 1972. Judge Zagel ruled that his testimony was "too remote in time" to the events of the case, which occurred a good 10 years later.

Zagel then turned to Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Cook. "Any questions, counselor?" Cook shook his head, no, and Jackson rushed from the courtroom without a glance behind him. "I might as well tell Noah to go back in the lockup, because there ain't going to be no fair trial," said Lewis Myers Jr., one of Noah's attorneys. "You cut our legs out," he told Zagel.

Out in the corridor, Jackson's small circle of supporters crowded around him. "We could hear Al Sharpton jabbering away," one official recalls, "wondering if we had that kind of picture on him." Alfreda Robinson still believes Jackson's testimony would have helped her husband and proudly recalled Jackson coming back for closing arguments in the case, along with "a number of other ministers."

Jackson claims that his ties to the gangs ended once Jeff Fort was jailed in the early 1970s, well before the "Rukn-type thing" began. "By that time," Jackson says, "I knew nothing about them. They had a building not far from where I was that became a 'religious' organization, and Jeff called himself a `minister.' The idea was, they used the church as sanctuary. The police saw them as real organized gangsters and infiltrated them. By that time, we had no communication with them."

But Jackson's ties to the Rukn weren't all past tense, officials say. Not long before Noah's retrial, Jackson brought picketers to a parking garage under construction by the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry to protest the firing of a black-owned scavenger company. Television news cameras broadcast the protest during the day. "When I saw those pictures, I did a double take," one federal investigator told me. "Behind Jesse were a number of known Rukns, waving picket signs up and down for the cameras."