First Jackson Biographer Threatened, Needed Bodyguards

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NewsMax.com

Wednesday, Mar. 6, 2002 9:16 p.m. EST

USA Today columnist Barbara Reynolds, who wrote a critical biography of Jesse Jackson in 1975, was subsequently run out of her hometown of Chicago and had to hire bodyguards after receiving death threats from Jackson's friends, according to Kenneth Timmerman, author of the new book "Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson."

"She told me she had to have guards at her apartment to keep her safe," Timmerman told WOR Radio's Bob Grant on Wednesday. "She was physically threatened by friends of Jesse Jackson in Chicago and she feared for her life."

Timmerman explained:

"The first investigative book about Jesse Jackson, and actually the last one until my book came out, was by a terrific black reporter in Chicago named Barbara Reynolds.

"It was really on its way to becoming a best seller until Jesse and his friends intervened with the booksellers and everyone else. [They] got her kicked off the airwaves and, basically, run out of Chicago."

Since Reynolds' experience, no other journalist has attempted to chronicle Jackson's exploits in book form, Timmerman told Grant.

Reynolds' biography included the first accounts from Southern Christian Leadership Conference officials who were with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King when he was assassinated and who said Jackson subsequently lied about King dying in his arms. (See: Jackson Faked King Assassination Role.)

Timmerman said he interviewed Reynolds for his own book in the Washington, D.C., area, where she now lives "quietly."

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