The Justice Department will open a new division to focus solely on the unfair lending practices that have severely affected minority communities, Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for the department's Civil Rights Division, announced last Thursday at the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Wall Street Project.

"So many middle-class Americans who worked hard to achieve the most basic building block of the American Dream – homeownership – found themselves on the brink, facing the loss of their most important asset. This crisis has overwhelmed families and ravaged communities. One fact is clear. While the foreclosure crisis has touched so many communities across America, communities of color have been hit particularly hard," Perez said in New York City.

Calling fair lending the Civil Rights Division's "top priority," Perez said, "reverse redlining," where toxic loan products are targeted to minority communities by unscrupulous brokers will be the chief target.

"Access to credit and capital is the foundation of our economy – without it, the promise of equal opportunity is empty. We are working once again to be sure that all individuals and all families have access to those resources that will allow them to achieve the promise of our great nation," Perez said.

Jackson said that the disparity between the success of Wall Street, even amid crisis, and regular citizens must be rectified:

"The banks have been resuscitated and re-fortified. Neither their structure nor the way they do business have been substantially challenged. Painfully, little has changed. Concentration of banking power has run amok. Our banks are not funding a future we can believe in and share."

Jackson's 13th annual Rainbow PUSH Coalition's Wall Street Economic Summit was titled "Targeted Stimulus: A Call to Equity and Parity." A second economic stimulus is needed for regular Americans said Jackson:

"We see record levels of unemployment, community bank and business collapses. Tax bases are eroding in states, cities and around the nation. We need a stimulus, part two, bottom up."

Stringent government regulation of banks is also needed to prevent the type of collapse that happened in 2008. The ability of banks to own other financial institutions also needs to be curtailed.

"Concentration of banking power has run amok," said Jackson. "Finance has run wild without accountability. Without structural reform, stringent regulation and oversight, they've abused power to make historical record profits and to disallow judges to modify mortgages in bankruptcy court."

Several steps are necessary to attain the financial fairness that Americans deserve, added Jackson. Working to reduce the foreclosure rate is a top priority. Less than a quarter of the 3.29 million homes eligible for loan modification under President Barack Obama's plan have been modified. Less than 1 percent of those loans have been permanently modified.

Because of unfair lending practices, minority communities are being hit the hardest.

"We've seen with the fair lending data a disproportionate impact of these toxic products on communities of color," said Vicki Schultz, senior counselor to the assistant attorney general at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and a guest at the summit. "We know that in some of these practices, discrimination is at the heart of them. We intend to vigorously enforce the fair-lending laws and make sure these practices are exposed and stopped."

The jobless rate, especially among African Americans, must be addressed with job creation, training and increased access to educational opportunities, said Jackson. Student loans rates must also be dropped, and the country should focus on providing more educational grants for students instead of forcing them to take out onerous loans.Approximately 85,000 jobs were lost in December and an estimated 11 million African Americans are out of work. The African American unemployment rate is 16.2 percent.

And it's not a temporary trend. Nearly 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for more than 27 weeks. Since 2007, this country has experienced the largest rise in unemployment since World War II.

Money is needed for these initiatives, and President Obama should tax banks to get it, Jackson said.

"The president is right to demand that bailout funds be paid back. But it should not go to debt reduction, it should go to unemployment reduction. We must rebuild so that we can repay," said Jackson.

Rainbow PUSH will purchase stocks in many of the major banks and attend shareholder meetings to raise these issues, noted Jackson, who will also be pushing for more loan modifications for people in foreclosure or pre-foreclosure.

Forty-plus years later, these are the same issues that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was fighting against, both Perez and Jackson said.

"In his day, he cried out against concentrated wealth on Wall Street, and expanding war in Vietnam, and the growth of poverty. We've come full circle. The concentration of wealth on Wall Street, expanding war fronts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, record levels of unemployment and depression for many more," said Jackson. "It's time for a fundamental change."