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A More Perfect Union: Advancing New American Rights

book by Jesse Jackson Jr.

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ4658360 ↗
Source-derived summary

A More Perfect Union: Advancing New American Rights or simply A More Perfect Union is non-fiction political analysis written by United States Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. in collaboration with Frank E.Watkins. Watkins is a political theorist, activist and was the press secretary to Jackson at the time. It was released in hardcover format on October 15, 2001, and in paperback format on April 25, 2008. The material for Jackson's book, his third, came from three trips he took in 1997–98 to American Civil War battlefields. Although Watkins is credited, the biographical content of the book is written as a first person narrative as if written solely by Jackson.

The National Park Service has twenty-eight national Civil War historic sites. Jackson and White visited approximately twenty battlefields in August 1997, December 1997 and the spring of 1998. Jackson's wife, Sandi Jackson, participated in the third trip. The trips heightened a belief of Jackson's that race as it relates to African Americans has been the focal point of social and political existence in American history.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “A More Perfect Union: Advancing New American Rights” is book by Jesse Jackson Jr. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through More, Perfect and Union, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2001, 2008, 1997, 1998—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2008-04-25. For this dossier, More, Perfect and Union is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “book by Jesse Jackson Jr” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4658360. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2001, 2008, 1997 and 1998.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “A More Perfect Union: Advancing New American Rights”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow A More Perfect Union: Advancing New American Rights primary sources, A More Perfect Union: Advancing New American Rights archive and More research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “A More Perfect Union: Advancing New American Rights” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.