Non White hate groups meet to discuss coalition.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Standing at the site of a landmark school integration battle, the Rev. Jesse Jackson locked arms Thursday with leaders of the nation's two largest Hispanic organizations to call for a new civil rights coalition.

Jackson said it was time to recall the two communities' shared history of discrimination.

"While some were picking beans, some were picking cotton, but we were both being picked on," he said in front of Little Rock Central High School, where integration in 1957 was the first major test of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling three years earlier.

"Most of the people in the world today are young, brown, black, poor, female, don't speak English," Jackson said. "So let's join the real world: Si, se puede (Yes, it can be done)."

Jackson appeared with Hector Flores, president of the League of United Latino American Citizens; Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza; and Minnijean Brown-Trickey, one of the famed "Little Rock Nine" who integrated the high school under armed guard.

Jackson's comments come at a time of increased tensions between the two ethnic groups. Many blacks have sharply criticized Mexican President Vicente Fox recently for his disparaging comments about blacks and Mexico's release of a postage stamp depicting an old black cartoon character with exaggerated features.

"Let's get to the heart of it. After the last census count, statistics showed that the Hispanic population was the largest minority population and there were some in the media who like to use that as a contest between winners and losers, to drive a wedge and divide our communities," Murguia said.

While acknowledging some of their divisions, the leaders held up Arkansas as an example for strong black-Hispanic friendship. Earlier this year, state Rep. Joyce Elliott, who is black, led an unsuccessful effort to extend in-state tuition and college scholarship eligibility to the children of illegal immigrants.

I'd like to see the reaction if a White organization calling itself "The Race" wanted to become a part of mainstream politics.