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CHICAGO (AP) - The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Monday contested the
assertion in a new Martin Luther King Jr. biography that he
had a bitter split with the slain civil rights leader.

Speaking to reporters after a breakfast held by his
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition to commemorate King's birthday,
Jackson denied that King accused him of trying to use the
movement to promote himself. That claim was made in historian
Taylor Branch's book "At Canaan's Edge: America in the King
Years, 1965-68," which was released last week.

Asked about the passage in question, Jackson said King and
his colleagues argued frequently about strategy but always
came to a consensus afterward. "We often had challenging
meetings," he said. "And that was what we did. But in the end
we left there together."

In the book, Branch describes King storming out of a meeting
with Jackson and other aides in a "fury" days before his
death. The author quotes King as saying angrily to
Jackson, "If you want to carve out your own niche in society,
go ahead. But for God's sake, leave me out!"

Jackson said a heated argument did take place a few days
before King's 1968 assassination. But as evidence there was
no break between them, he distributed excerpts from the
famous "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech that King
delivered in Memphis on the eve of his death, mentioning
Jackson by name.

After urging striking sanitation workers to boycott several
corporations over their hiring policies, King said in that
speech: "As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the
garbage men have been feeling pain. Now we must redistribute
the pain."

Jackson said on Monday that those comments came "five minutes
after the meeting Branch refers to. And if what he said is
true, this wouldn't be here. That paragraph speaks for
itself."

He said he holds Branch in "high regard" but was never
interviewed for the book.

At the breakfast, attended by about 2,000 people, Jackson
called King a "prophet" but said his "I Have a Dream" speech
has yet to be fulfilled for blacks.

"We are free, but not equal," Jackson said. "We are unequal
in life expectancy, unequal in infant mortality, unequal in
access to education."