Jesse Jackson 1941–

Civil rights leader, politician

At a Glance…

Joined King and the SCLC in 1965

Ran for President

From D.C. to Wall Street

Diplomatic Efforts

Sought Answers in Suspicious Hanging Death

Never Far From Controversy

Sources

Jesse Jackson has firmly established himself as one of the most dynamic forces for social and political action in both the national and international arenas. He has campaigned for economic justice, human rights, world peace, and the United States presidency. An inspirational speaker, committed activist, and tireless and confident campaigner, Jackson began his career as a foot soldier in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and has developed into a leader of millions of Americans—black and white—a “rainbow coalition” of the nation’s dispossessed and disenfranchised.

Jackson has drawn upon his own early experience in Greenville, South Carolina, to relate to his constituency. He was born on October 8, 1941, to a seventeen-year-old unwed high school student and her older, comfortably middle-class neighbor, a married man. Jackson’s ancestry includes black slaves, a Cherokee, and a white plantation owner. Although the young Jackson was quite aware of poverty and illegitimacy, his mother, grandmother, and stepfather were always able to attend to family needs. Even so, his knowledge of social inequities and of his more privileged half brothers affected him. As Barbara Reynolds wrote in her biography Jesse Jackson: America’s David: “Every teacher Jesse came into contact with took note of his insecurities, masked by a stoic sense of superiority. They never perceived him as brilliant, but rather each saw him as a charmer, a spirited, fierce competitor with an almost uncanny drive to prove himself by always winning, always being number one in everything.” At Sterling High School Jackson was elected president of his class, the honor society, and the student council, was named state officer of the Future Teachers of America, finished tenth in his class, and lettered in football, basketball, and baseball.

In 1959 Jackson left the South to attend the University of Illinois on an athletic scholarship. During his first year, however, he became dissatisfied with his treatment on campus and on the gridiron and decided to transfer to Greensboro’s North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, a predominantly black institution. There he was quarterback, honor student, fraternity officer, and president of the student body. After receiving his B.A. in sociology he accepted a Rockefeller grant to attend the Chicago Theological Seminary, where he planned to train for the ministry. Jackson was ordained a Baptist minister in 1968, though he had not finished his course work at CTS,

At a Glance…

Born Jesse Louis Burns on October 8, 1941, in Greenville, SC; son of Noah Robinson and Helen Burns Jackson; adopted by stepfather, Charles Henry Jackson, 1957; married Jacqueline Lavinia Davis, 1964; children: Santita, Jesse Louis, Jr., Jonathan Luther, Yusef Du Bois, Jacqueline Lavinia; grandchildren: Jessica and Jonathan. Education: Attended University of Illinois, 1959-60; North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, B.A., 1964; attended Chicago Theological Seminary, 1964-66, awarded M.Div., 2000. Politics: Democrat Religion: Baptist. Ordained Baptist minister, 1968.

Career: Field rep.for (CORE), 1964; SCLC demonstrator, Selma, 1965; Chicago coordinator of Operation Breadbasket, 1966-67, national dir., 1967-71; founder, Operation PUSH, 1971, executive director, 1971-86, founder, PUSH-Excel, PUSH for Economic Justice; Democratie presidential candidate, 1983-84, 1987-88; National Rainbow Coalition Inc., Chicago, founder, 1986, national president, 1986-; senator, District of Columbia, 1991-96; TV host, Voices of America with Jesse Jackson; Chicago radio host; columnist, Los Angeles Times Syndicate; founder, the Wall Street Project, 1997; co-author, It’s About Money, 2000.

Awards: Rockefeller grant, c. mid-1960s; Presidential Award, National Medical Assn., 1969; Humanitarian Father of the Year, National Father’s Day Committee, 1971; Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2000; numerous honorary degrees from colleges and universities, including Pepperdine, Oberlin, Oral Roberts Univ., Howard, and Georgetown.

Addresses: Office —National Rainbow Coalition Inc., 30 West Washington, Suite 300, Chicago, IL 60602.

having instead left in 1966 to commit himself full-time to the Civil Rights movement.

Jackson first became involved in the Civil Rights movement while a student at North Carolina A & T. There he joined the Greensboro chapter of the Council on Racial Equality (CORE), an organization that had led early sit-ins to protest segregated lunch counters. In 1963 Jackson organized numerous marches, sit-ins, and mass arrests to press for the desegregation of local restaurants and theaters. His leadership in these events earned him recognition within the regional movement; he was chosen president of the North Carolina Intercollegiate Council on Human Rights, field director of CORE’s southeastern operations, and in 1964 served as delegate to the Young Democrats National Convention. In Chicago in 1965 Jackson was a volunteer for the Coordinating Committee of Community Organizations and organized regular meetings of local black ministers and the faculty of the Chicago Theological Seminary.

Joined King and the SCLC in 1965

Jackson joined Martin Luther King, Jr., and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1965 during demonstrations in Selma, Alabama, pushing for expanded voting rights for blacks. When the SCLC launched the Chicago Freedom movement in 1966, Jackson was there to put his knowledge of the city and contacts within the black community to work for King. He organized local ministers to support the movement, marched through all-white neighborhoods to push for open housing, and began work on the SCLC’s economic program, Operation Breadbasket. Drawing from successful campaigns in other cities, Operation Breadbasket organized the black community to use selective buying and boycotts to support black manufacturers and retailers and to pressure white-owned businesses to stock more of their products and hire more black workers. Jackson served as Operation Breadbasket’s Chicago coordinator for one year and was then named its national director. Under Jackson’s leadership the Chicago group won concessions from local dairies and supermarkets to hire more blacks and stock more products from black businesses. It encouraged deposits from businesses and the government for black-owned banks and organized a Black Christmas and a Black Expo to promote black-owned manufacturers.

In addition to his SCLC activities, Jackson led a number of other campaigns in his adopted home city and state. In 1969 and 1970 he gathered Illinois’s malnourished and led them on a march to the state capital to raise consciousness of hunger. He led a similar event in Chicago. The state responded by increasing funding to school lunch programs, but Mayor Richard Daley’s machine in Chicago was less cooperative. The mayor’s power and resistance to change, as well as an Illinois law that raised difficult barriers to independent candidates, prompted Jackson to run for mayor of Chicago in 1971. He was not successful; some believe, however, that his efforts laid the foundation for Harold Washington’s successful bid to become Chicago’s first black mayor in 1983.

In 1971 Jackson resigned from the SCLC to found his own organization, People United to Save Humanity (PUSH). Because of his aggressive, impatient, and commanding personality, Jackson had long irritated SCLC leadership; and, in the three and a half years after King’s assassination, he had offended others with his public antics to secure a role as leader of the Civil Rights movement and his feuds with Ralph D. Abernathy, King’s successor as president of the SCLC, over leadership, policy, and funding.

Ran for President

Jackson launched his first campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984. His appeals for social programs, voting rights, and affirmative action for those neglected by Reaganomics earned him strong showings in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, New York, Louisiana, and Washington, D.C. He received 3.5 million votes, enough to secure a measure of power and respect at the Democratic convention.

Jackson’s 1988 campaign for the Democratic nomination was characterized by more organization and funding than his previous attempt. With the experience he gained from 1984 and new resources, Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition surprised the media and the political pundits. Initially written off as unelectable, Jackson emerged in the primary/caucus season as a serious contender for the nomination. He attracted over 6.9 million votes—from urban blacks and Hispanics, poor rural whites, farmers and factory workers, feminists and homosexuals, and from white progressives wanting to be part of a historic change. In his platform he called for homes for the homeless, comparable worth and day care for working women, a higher minimum wage, a commitment to the family farm, and an all-out war on drugs. “When we form a great quilt of unity and common ground” he told delegates at the party convention on July 19, 1988, “we’ll have the power to bring about health care and housing and jobs and education and hope to our nation.

After early respectable losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, he won five southern states on Super Tuesday, March 8, 1988. On March 12 he won the caucus in his birth state of South Carolina and three days later finished second in his home state of Illinois. On March 26, 1988 Jackson stunned Dukakis and the rest of the nation in the Michigan caucus: Having won that northern industrial state with 55 percent of the vote, Jackson became the Democratic front-runner. Dukakis later recaptured the lead and the eventual nomination with strong showings in the second half of the primary season.

Jackson then exercised the power of his second-place finish to force his consideration as a vice-presidential running mate and to influence the nature of the Democratic Convention and the issues included on its platform. Although Jackson was not chosen as the vice-presidential running mate, he had succeeded in bringing Americans of all colors to consider a black man for the presidency and vice-presidency.

After the 1988 elections Jackson moved his home from Chicago to Washington, D.C. There he has campaigned against homelessness in the nation’s capital. He was considered one of the top contenders to take over as the capital’s mayor after Marion Berry was forced out of office by a drug scandal, but Jackson refused to run. Instead, he announced in July of 1990 that he would seek election as the District of Columbia’s “statehood senator,” a position recently established by the city government to push Congress to grant statehood to the district. He was elected in November and sworn into office in January of 1991. Jackson did not seek re-election after his six-year term as statehood senator ended in 1996, although he continued to advocate statehood for the nation’s capital.

From D.C. to Wall Street

In 1997 Jackson shifted his focus from the nation’s political capital to its financial capital. Seeing a need for a stronger minority presence on New York’s Wall Street, Jackson founded the Wall Street Project. The organization lobbied companies to provide more business and employment opportunities for minorities. The Wall Street Project promoted conscientiousness among African American stockholders who may not realize the influence that they have as shareholders. As Jackson explained to Black Enterprise, “When you go into a meeting as a shareholder, you now have the right to the floor. Now you can walk into a board meeting and say ’Mr. Chairman, I’d like to see a list of our Board of Directors...a list of our employees so we can see where they fit into this company horizontally and vertically.” A stockholder has the power to promote greater employment and business opportunities for African Americans.

Prior to founding the Wall Street Project, Jackson’s strategy for influencing corporate behavior had been to organize protests. However, a pivotal event occurred in 1996 which helped Jackson decide to change his tactics. When charges had surfaced that Texaco employees had made racist comments, Jackson called New York State Comptroller H. Carl McCall, asking him to join him in picketing Texaco. McCall told Black Enterprise that he responded, ‘“Jesse, when you own a million shares you don’t have to picket.’” Because McCall controlled New York state’s investments, he had a great deal of influence with the companies the state had invested in.

With the Wall Street Project, Jackson hopes to give minorities the same influence McCall had with Texaco. Jackson told Black Enterprise. “We empower politically with our vote. Now we must empower economically with our dollar.” But not just anyone can vote. Only stockholders have a real say in corporate operations. The purchase of just ten shares of stock, Jackson said, provides a shareholder with enough leverage to promote business opportunities for African Americans. As the stock’s value increases, so too does the amount of influence a shareholder has.

Diplomatic Efforts

Throughout his career as a political and social activist, Jackson has also been a prominent figure in international diplomacy. In 1979 he traveled to South Africa to speak out against apartheid and to the Middle East to try to establish relations between Israel and the Palestinians. In January of 1984 he returned to the Middle East to negotiate the release of Lieutenant Robert Goodman, a black Navy pilot who had been shot down and taken hostage in the region. Later that year he traveled to Cuba to negotiate the release of several political prisoners held there and to Central America, where he spoke out for regional peace. In 1990 Jackson was the first American to bring hostages out of Iraq and Kuwait.

When three U.S. soldiers serving as part of NATO’s forces in Yugoslavia were captured by the Yugoslav army in March of 1999, Jackson, along with an inter faith delegation, embarked on a diplomatic mission to negotiate their release. U.S. national security advisor Sandy Berger warned Jackson, as a private citizen, he did not have the authority to offer Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosovic any concessions on behalf of the United States. Berger also warned that Jackson’s safety could not be guaranteed. Despite these warnings, Jackson, confident that he could persuade Milsocovic to release the prisoners as a gesture of goodwill, set off on his diplomatic mission. Jackson’s confidence was not unfounded and when Jackson returned it was with the three soldiers at his side. The U.S. Senate recognized Jackson’s efforts with a commendation.

In May of 1999, Jackson traveled to war-torn Sierra Leone, where he negotiated a cease-fire agreement between Tejan Kabbah, the country’s president, and rebel Foday Sankoh. Jackson also negotiated for the release of more than two thousand prisoners of war. One year later, he returned to Sierra Leone to assist once more in the country’s peace process.

Sought Answers in Suspicious Hanging Death

When teenager Raynard Johnson was found hanging by a belt from the pecan tree in front of his home in Kokomo, Mississippi, in 2000, suspicions arose immediately that his death may have been a lynching. Although medical examiners found no evidence of struggle, Johnson’s parents could not believe that their son had committed suicide. Jackson did not believe the boy’s death was a suicide either. He told Jet, “He had just gotten a computer. He was outgoing. He was in the Top 5 percentile on his test scores. He was very bright....A lot of signs point upwards. He was excited about life.”

Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition/PUSH launched its own investigation into Johnson’s death. Jackson’s investigators identified several people who could have been involved in the teenager’s death and said that someone may have been angered by Johnson’s friendship with two white girls. Authorities, however, said that Johnson’s girlfriend had broken up with him shortly before his death and contended that all the evidence was consistent with suicide.

In 2000, Jackson, along with his son, Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., published It’s About the Money!: How You Can Get Out of Debt, Build Wealth, and Achieve Your Financial Dreams! The book is a how-to guide for financial independence and security. Jackson explained to Mother Jones that economic self-sufficiency is a vital base for the struggle for freedom. “It costs to send children to college,” Jackson said. “It costs to have health insurance.” Yet, in a culture of credit card debt, so many Americans do not understand basic economics. With his book, Jackson hoped to change that.

Never Far From Controversy

Jackson has stirred both admiration and criticism. His behavior in the hours immediately following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., was a subject of controversy: Jackson claimed that he had held the dying leader, heard his last words, and had his shirt stained by King’s blood. Other SCLC officers present at the murder have disputed those claims. As an organizer Jackson often overstepped his authority in SCLC matters and violated organization policy in a number of his Chicago campaigns. His economic boycotts were criticized by some businessmen as extortion and by some reformers for lacking follow-through. The management of PUSH’s people and finances were the subject of close scrutiny and the freewheeling nature of the organization was regularly called into question. Jackson offended some Americans by negotiating with the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), Fidel Castro, and the Marxist Sandinista govenrment of Nicaragua. Jackson’s connection with the Black Muslim leader and outspoken anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, as well as the candidate’s reference to New York City as “Hymietown”, outraged Jews.

However, the same driving ambition to achieve success that is the root of Jackson’s weaknesses is also the source of his strength. He is a tireless worker who is fiercely committed to his causes, even when bedridden—Jackson suffers from sickle-cell trait. He is an intelligent, creative, and charismatic leader, and an inspirational speaker capable of archiving numerous details, then using them to encapsulate his agenda along with the aspirations of many Americans. He has a flair for the dramatic that infuses an increasingly tedious political process with life. And finally, Jackson acts while others talk of action. He has become the leading spokesman for Americans forgotten by the power brokers of the political process, especially blacks. In a 1996 speech, Jackson said, “If you go along and get along, you’re a coward. Only by principled engagement can you be a force for change and hope.” Jackson’s life has been one of principled engagement.

Sources

Books

Abernathy, Ralph David, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, Harper, 1989.

Colton, Elizabeth O., The Jackson Phenomenon: The Man, the Power, the Message, Doubleday, 1989.

Reynolds, Barbara A., Jesse Jackson: America’s David, JFJ Associates, 1985.

Periodicals

Africa News Service, May 24, 1999; May 17, 2000.

Black Enterprise, October 1998.

Business Wire, January 5, 2000.

Christian Science Monitor, August 15, 1989.

Commonweal, November 7, 1986.

Ebony, February 1999.

Harper’s Magazine, March 1969.

Jet, July 22, 1996; May 24, 1999; December 27, 1999; June 19, 2000; July, 17, 2000; August 28, 2000; September 4, 2000.

Mother Jones, March 2000.

Newsweek, April 4, 1988; October 16, 1989; January 29, 1990; May 10, 1999.

United Press International, May 4, 1999; May 10, 1999.

Vanity Fair, January 1988. Vital Speeches, September 15, 1996.

—Bryan Ryan and Jennifer M. York

Jesse Jackson 1941—

Civil rights leader, politician

At a Glance…

Joined King and the SCLC in 1965

A Force in Politics

Never Far From Controversy

Sources

During the last decade Jesse Jackson has firmly established himself as one of the most dynamic forces for social and political action in both the national and international arenas. His campaigns for economic justice, human rights, world peace, and the United States presidency have earned him recognition in polls as America’s most important black leader and the third most admired man in the U.S., as well as celebrity status among journalists and statesmen in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Central America. An inspirational speaker, committed activist, and tireless and confident campaigner, Jackson began his career as a foot soldier in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and has developed into a leader of millions of Americans— black and white—a “rainbow coalition” of the nation’s dispossessed and disenfranchised.

Jackson’s 1988 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination attracted over 6.9 million votes—from urban blacks and Hispanics, poor rural whites, farmers and factory workers, feminists and homosexuals, and from white progressives wanting to be part of a historic change. He finished behind Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in the primaries, but exercised the power of his second-place finish to force his consideration as a vice-presidential running mate and to influence the nature of the Democratic Convention and the issues included on its platform. He called for homes for the homeless, comparable worth and day care for working women, a higher minimum wage, a commitment to the family farm, and an all-out war on drugs. “When we form a great quilt of unity and common ground” he told delegates at the party convention on July 19, 1988, “we’ll have the power to bring about health care and housing and jobs and education and hope to our nation.”

Jackson has drawn upon his own early experience in Greenville, South Carolina, to relate to his constituency. He was born on October 8, 1941, to a seventeen-year-old unwed high school student and her older, comfortably middle-class neighbor, a married man. Jackson’s ancestry includes black slaves, a Cherokee, and a white plantation owner. Although the young Jackson was quite aware of poverty and illegitimacy, his mother, grandmother, and stepfather were always able to see to family needs. Even so, his knowledge of social inequities and of his more privileged half brothers affected him. As Barbara

At a Glance…

Full name, Jesse Louis Jackson; original name, Jesse Louis Burns; born October 8, 1941, in Greenville, SC; son of Noah Robinson (a cotton grader) and Helen Burns Jackson (a hairdresser); adopted by stepfather, Charles Henry Jackson (a postal worker), 1957; married Jacqueline Lavinia Davis, 1964; children: Santita, Jesse Louis, Jr., Jonathan Luther, Yusef Du Bois, Jacqueline Lavinia. Education: Attended University of Illinois, 1959-60; North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, B.A., 1964; attended Chicago Theological Seminary, 1964-66. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Baptist.

Ordained Baptist minister, 1968. Field representative for the Council on Racial Equality (CORE), 1964; demonstrator in SCLC voting rights campaign, Selma, Alabama, 1965; Chicago coordinator of Operation Breadbasket, 1966-67, national director, 1967-71; Operation PUSH founder, 1971, executive director, 1971-86, also founder of PUSH-Excel and PUSH for Economic Justice; candidate for Democratic presidential nomination, 1983-84 and 1987-88; National Rainbow Coalition Inc., Chicago, founder, 1986, national president, 1986—; statehood senator for the District of Columbia, 1991—. Host of the syndicated television program Voices of America with Jesse Jackson, 1989—; also hosted radio broadcasts from Chicago and contributed weekly columns to the Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

Awards: Rockefeller grant, c. mid-1960s, Presidential Award, National Medical Association, 1969; Humanitarian Father of the Year, National Father’s Day Committee, 1971; numerous honorary degrees from colleges and universities, including Pepperdine University, Oberlin College, Oral Roberts University, Howard University, and Georgetown University.

Addresses: Office —National Rainbow Coalition Inc., 30 West Washington, Suite 300, Chicago, IL 60602.

Reynolds wrote in her biography Jesse Jackson: America ’s David: “Every teacher Jesse came into contact with took note of his insecurities, masked by a stoic sense of superiority. They never perceived him as brilliant, but rather each saw him as a charmer, a spirited, fierce competitor with an almost uncanny drive to prove himself by always winning, always being number one in everything.” At Sterling High School Jackson was elected president of his class, the honor society, and the student council, was named state officer of the Future Teachers of America, finished tenth in his class, and lettered in football, basketball, and baseball.

In 1959 Jackson left the South to attend the University of Illinois on an athletic scholarship. During his first year, however, he became dissatisfied with his treatment on campus and on the gridiron and decided to transfer to Greensboro’s North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, a predominantly black institution. There he was quarterback, honor student, fraternity officer, and president of the student body. After receiving his B.A. in sociology he accepted a Rockefeller grant to attend the Chicago Theological Seminary, where he planned to train for the ministry. Jackson was ordained a Baptist minister in 1968, though he had not finished his coursework at CTS, having instead left in 1966 to commit himself full-time to the Civil Rights Movement.

Jackson first became involved in the Civil Rights Movement while a student at North Carolina A & T. There he joined the Greensboro chapter of the Council on Racial Equality (CORE), an organization that had led early sit-ins to protest segregated lunch counters. In 1963 Jackson organized numerous marches, sit-ins, and mass arrests to press for the desegregation of local restaurants and theaters. His leadership in these events earned him recognition within the regional movement; he was chosen president of the North Carolina Intercollegiate Council on Human Rights, field director of CORE’s southeastern operations, and in 1964 served as delegate to the Young Democrats National Convention. In Chicago in 1965 Jackson was a volunteer for the Coordinating Committee of Community Organizations and organized regular meetings of local black ministers and the faculty of the Chicago Theological Seminary.

Joined King and the SCLC in 1965

Jackson joined Martin Luther King, Jr., and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1965 during demonstrations in Selma, Alabama, pushing for expanded voting rights for blacks. When the SCLC launched the Chicago Freedom Movement in 1966, Jackson was there to put his knowledge of the city and contacts within the black community to work for King. He organized local ministers to support the movement, marched through all-white neighborhoods to push for open housing, and began work on SCLC’s economic program, Operation Breadbasket. Drawing from successful campaigns in other cities, Operation Breadbasket organized the black community to use selective buying and boycotts to support black manufacturers and retailers and to pressure white-owned businesses to stock more of their products and hire more black workers. Jackson served as Operation Breadbasket’s Chicago coordinator for one year and was then named its national director. Under Jackson’s leadership the Chicago group won concessions from local dairies and supermarkets to hire more blacks and stock more products from black businesses. It encouraged deposits from businesses and the government for black-owned banks and organized a Black Christmas and a Black Expo to promote black-owned manufacturers.

In addition to his SCLC activities, Jackson led a number of other campaigns in his adopted home city and state. In 1969 and 1970 he gathered Illinois’s malnourished and led them on a march to the state capital to raise consciousness of hunger. He led a similar event in Chicago. The state responded by increasing funding to school lunch programs, but Mayor Richard Daley’s machine in Chicago was less cooperative. The mayor’s power and resistance to change, as well as an Illinois law that raised difficult barriers to independent candidates, prompted Jackson to run for mayor of Chicago in 1971. He was not successful; some believe, however, that his efforts laid the foundation for Harold Washington’s successful bid to become Chicago’s first black mayor in 1983.

In 1971 Jackson resigned from the SCLC to found his own organization, People United to Save Humanity (PUSH). Because of his aggressive, impatient, and commanding personality, Jackson had long irritated SCLC leadership; and, in the three and a half years after King’s assassination, he had offended others with his public antics to secure a role as leader of the Civil Rights Movement and his feuds with Ralph D. Abernathy, King’s successor as president of the SCLC, over leadership, policy, and funding. Through PUSH Jackson continued to pursue the economic objectives of Operation Breadbasket and expand into areas of social and political development for blacks in Chicago and across the nation. The 1970s saw direct action campaigns, weekly radio broadcasts, and awards through which Jackson protected black homeowners, workers, and businesses, and honored prominent blacks in the U.S. and abroad. He also promoted education through PUSH-Excel, a spin-off program that focused on keeping inner-city youths in school and providing them with job placement.

A Force in Politics

Since 1979 Jackson has repeatedly asserted himself as a prominent figure in national and international politics. In that year he traveled to South Africa to speak out against apartheid and to the Middle East to try to establish relations between Israel and the Palestinians. In January of 1984 he returned to the Middle East to negotiate the release of Lieutenant Robert Goodman, a black Navy pilot who had been shot down and taken hostage in the region. Later that year he traveled to Cuba to negotiate the release of several political prisoners held there and to Central America, where he spoke out for regional peace. Nineteen eighty-four was also the year of Jackson’s first campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. His appeals for social programs, voting rights, and affirmative action for those neglected by Reaganomics earned him strong showings in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, New York, Louisiana, and Washington, D.C. He received 3.5 million votes, enough to secure a measure of power and respect at the Democratic convention.

Jackson’s 1988 campaign for the Democratic nomination was characterized by more organization and funding than his previous attempt. With the experience he gained from 1984 and new resources, Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition surprised the media and the political pundits. Initially written off as unelectable, Jackson emerged in the primary/caucus season as a serious contender for the nomination. After early respectable losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, he won five southern states on Super Tuesday, March 8, 1988. On March 12 he won the caucus in his birth state of South Carolina and three days later finished second in his home state of Illinois. On March 26 Jackson stunned Dukakis and the rest of the nation in the Michigan caucus: Having won that northern industrial state with 55 percent of the vote, Jackson became the Democratic front-runner. Dukakis later recaptured the lead and the eventual nomination with strong showings in the second half of the primary season. Even so, Jackson had succeeded in bringing Americans of all colors to consider a black man for the presidency and vice-presidency.

After the 1988 elections Jackson moved his home from Chicago to Washington, D.C. There he has campaigned against homelessness in the nation’s capital. He was considered one of the top contenders to take over as the capital’s mayor after Marion Barry was forced out of office by a drug scandal, but Jackson refused to run.

Instead, he announced in July of 1990 that he would seek election as the District of Columbia’s “statehood senator,” a position recently established by the city government to push Congress to grant statehood to the district. He was elected in November and sworn into office in January of 1991. Even with his new duties, Jackson remains the most visible and vocal contender for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination.

Never Far From Controversy

From civil rights activist to presidential candidate, Jesse Jackson has stirred both admiration and criticism. His behavior in the hours immediately following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., was a subject of controversy: Jackson claimed that he had held the dying leader, heard his last words, and had his shirt stained by King’s blood. Other SCLC officers present at the murder have disputed those claims. As an organizer Jackson often overstepped his authority in SCLC matters and violated organization policy in a number of his Chicago campaigns. His economic boycotts were criticized by some businessmen as extortion and by some reformers for lacking follow-through. The management of PUSH’s people and finances were the subject of close scrutiny and the freewheeling nature of the organization was regularly called into question. Jackson offended some Americans by negotiating with the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), Fidel Castro, and the Marxist Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Jackson’s connection with the Black Muslim leader and outspoken anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, as well as the candidate’s reference to New York City as “Hymietown,” outraged Jews.

The same driving ambition to achieve success that is at the root of Jackson’s weaknesses is also the source of his strength. He is a tireless worker who is fiercely committed to his causes, even when bedridden—Jackson suffers from sickle-cell trait. He is an intelligent, creative, and charismatic leader, an inspirational speaker capable of archiving numerous details, then using them to encapsulate his agenda along with the aspirations of many Americans. He has a flair for the dramatic that infuses an increasingly tedious political process with life. And finally, Jackson acts while others talk of action. He has become the leading spokesman for Americans forgotten by the power brokers of the political process, especially blacks. In his speeches Jackson often relates his vision of hope for these Americans: “We have come from the slaveship to the championship, from the guttermost to the uttermost, from the outhouse to the courthouse, and from the statehouse to the White House.”

Sources

Books

Abernathy, Ralph David, And the Wails Came Tumbling Down, Harper, 1989.

Colton, Elizabeth O., The Jackson Phenomenon: The Man, the Power, the Message, Doubleday, 1989.

Reynolds, Barbara A., Jesse Jackson: America’s David, JFJ Associates, 1985.

Periodicals

Christian Science Monitor, August 15, 1989.

Commonweal, November 7, 1986.

Harper’s Magazine, March 1969.

Newsweek, April 4, 1988; October 16, 1989; January 29, 1990.

Vanity Fair, January 1988.

—Bryan Ryan

Jackson, Jesse

October 8, 1941

Minister, politician, and civil rights activist Jesse Louis Jackson was born Jesse Burns in Greenville, South Carolina, to Helen Burns and Noah Robinson, a married man who lived next door. In 1943 his mother married Charles Henry Jackson, who adopted Jesse in 1957. Jesse Jackson has recognized both men as his fathers. In 1959 Jackson graduated from Greenville's Sterling High School. A gifted athlete, he was offered a professional baseball contract; instead, he accepted a scholarship to play football at the University of Illinois, at Champaign-Urbana. When he discovered, however, that African Americans were not allowed to play quarterback, he enrolled at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro. There, besides being a star athlete, Jackson began his activist career as a participant in the student sit-in movement to integrate Greensboro's public facilities.

Jackson's leadership abilities and charisma earned him a considerable reputation by the time he graduated with a B.S. in sociology in 1964. After graduation he married Jacqueline Brown, whom he had met at the sit-in protests. During his senior year he worked briefly with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), quickly being elevated to the position of director of southeastern operations. Jackson then moved north, eschewing law school at Duke University in order to attend the Chicago Theological Seminary in 1964. He was later ordained to the ministry by two renowned figures: gospel music star and pastor Clay Evans and legendary revivalist and pulpit orator C. L. Franklin. Jackson left the seminary in 1965 and returned to the South to become a member of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

Jackson initially became acquainted with SCLC during the famous march on Selma, Alabama in 1965. In 1966 King appointed him to head the Chicago branch of SCLC's Operation Breadbasket, which was formed in 1962 to force various businesses to employ more African Americans. In 1967, only a year after his first appointment, King made Jackson the national director of Operation Breadbasket. Jackson concentrated on businesses heavily patronized by blacks, including bakeries, milk companies, soft-drink bottlers, and soup companies. He arranged a number of boycotts of businesses refusing to comply with SCLC demands of fair employment practices and successfully negotiated compromises that soon gained national attention.

Jackson was in King's entourage when King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968. After King's death, however, Jackson's relationship with SCLC became increasingly strained over disagreements about his independence and his penchant for taking what was considered to be undue initiative in both public relations and organizational planning. He was also criticized for the direction in which he was leading Operation Breadbasket. Finally, in 1971, Jackson left SCLC and founded Operation PUSH, which he would lead for thirteen years. As head of PUSH, he continued an aggressive program of negotiating black employment agreements with white businesses, as well as promoting black educational excellence and self-esteem.

In 1980 Jackson demanded that an African American step forward as a presidential candidate in the 1984 election. On October 30, 1983, after carefully weighing the chances and need for a candidate, he dramatically announced, on the television program 60 Minutes, his own candidacy to capture the White House. Many African-American politicians and community leaders, such as Andrew Young, felt that Jackson's candidacy would only divide the Democrats and chose instead to support Walter Mondale, the favorite for the nomination. Jackson, waging a campaign stressing voter registration, carried a hopeful message of empowerment to African Americans, poor people, and other minorities. This constituency of the "voiceless and downtrodden" became the foundation for what Jackson termed a "Rainbow Coalition" of Americans—the poor, struggling farmers, feminists, gays, lesbians, and others who historically, according to Jackson, had lacked representation. Jackson, offering himself as an alternative to the mainstream Democratic Party, called for, among other things, a defense budget freeze, programs to stimulate full employment, self-determination for the Palestinians, and political empowerment of African Americans through voter registration.

Jackson's campaign in 1984 was characterized by dramatic successes and equally serious political gaffes. In late 1983 U.S. military flyer Robert Goodman was shot down over Syrian-held territory in Lebanon while conducting an assault. In a daring political gamble, Jackson made Goodman's release a personal mission, arguing that if the flyer had been white, the U.S. government would have worked more diligently toward his release. Traveling to Syria, Jackson managed to meet with President Hafez al-Assad and Goodman was released shortly afterwards; Jackson gained great political capital by appearing at the flyer's side as he made his way back to the United States.

The 1984 campaign, however, was plagued by political missteps. Jackson's offhand dubbing of New York as "Hymietown" while eating lunch with two reporters cost him much of his potential Jewish support and raised serious questions about his commitment to justice for all Americans. Although Jackson eventually apologized, the characterization continued to haunt him and remains a symbol of strained relations between African Americans and Jews. Another issue galling to many Jews and others was Jackson's relationship with Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam. Farrakhan had appeared with Jackson and stumped for him early in the campaign. Jackson, despite advice to the contrary, refused to repudiate Farrakhan; it was only after one speech, in which Farrakhan labeled Judaism a "dirty" religion, that the Jackson campaign issued a statement condemning both the speech and the minister. Another controversy, and a source of special concern to Jews, was Jackson's previous meetings with Yasir Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and his advocacy of self-determination for the Palestinians.

Jackson ended his historic first run with an eloquent speech before the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, reminding black America that "our time has come." In a strong showing in a relatively weak primary field, Jackson had garnered almost 3.3 million votes out of the approximately 18 million cast.

Even more impressive than Jackson's first bid for the presidency was his second run in 1988. Jackson espoused a political vision built upon the themes he first advocated in 1984. His campaign once again touted voter registration drives and the Rainbow Coalition, which by this time had become a structured organization closely overseen by Jackson. His new platform, which included many of the planks from 1984, included the validity of "comparable worth" as a viable means of eradicating pay inequities based on gender, the restoration of a higher maximum tax rate, and the implementation of national health care. Jackson also urged policies to combat "factory flight" in the Sun Belt and to provide aid to farmworkers in their fight to erode the negative effect of corporate agribusiness on family farms. Further, he railed against the exploitative practices of U.S. and transnational corporations, urging the redirection of their profits from various foreign ventures to the development of local economies.

While he failed to secure the Democratic nomination, Jackson finished with a surprisingly large number of convention delegates and a strong finish in the primaries. In thirty-one of thirty-six primaries, Jackson won either first or second place, earning almost seven million votes out of the approximately 23 million cast. In 1988 Jackson won over many of the black leaders who had refused to support him during his first campaign. His performance also indicated a growing national respect for his oratorical skills and his willingness to remain faithful to politically progressive ideals.

In the 1992 presidential campaign, Jackson, who was not a candidate, was critical of Democratic front-runners Bill Clinton and Al Gore and did not endorse them until the final weeks of the campaign. Since his last full-time political campaign in 1988, Jackson has remained highly visible in American public life. He has crusaded for various causes, including the institution of a democratic polity in South Africa, statehood for the District of Columbia, and the banishment of illegal drugs from American society.

Jackson has also been an outspoken critic of professional athletics, arguing that more African Americans need to be involved in the management and ownership of professional sports teams and that discrimination remains a large problem for many black athletes. Further, on the college level, the institution of the NCAA's Proposition 42 and Proposition 48 have earned criticism from Jackson as being discriminatory against young black athletes. Through the medium of a short-lived 1991 television talk show, Jackson sought to widen his audience, addressing pressing concerns faced by African Americans.

Jackson's various crusades against illegal drugs and racism, while often specifically targeted toward black teenagers, have exposed millions of Americans to his message. His powerful oratorical style—pulpit oratory that emphasizes repetition of key phrases like "I am somebody"—often impresses and challenges audiences regardless of their political beliefs. In late 1988 Jackson became president of the National Rainbow Coalition, Inc.; he remains involved in the activities of numerous other organizations.

During the early 1990s Jackson remained largely outside the national spotlight. He was disappointed by the failure of his bid to assume leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People following the resignation of Rev. Benjamin Chavis. Jackson returned to widespread public prominence in the mid-1990s. In 1996 he supported the successful congressional campaign of his son, Jesse Jackson Jr. In 1998 he became a close adviser to President Bill Clinton following reports of Clinton's extramarital affair. Later that year he announced that he was considering another presidential run in 2000.

Jackson has been the most prominent civil rights leader and African-American national figure since the death of Martin Luther King Jr. The history of national black politics in the 1970s and 1980s was largely his story. He has shown a great ability for making alliances, as well as a talent for defining issues and generating controversy. The essential dilemma of Jackson's career, as with many of his peers, has been the search for a way to advance and further the agenda of the civil rights movement as a national movement at a time when the political temper of the country has been increasingly conservative.

Reverend Jesse Jackson

"My constituency is the damned, disinherited, disrespected and the despised."

speech delivered to the democratic national convention in san francisco, july 17, 1984.

As the new century began, Jesse Jackson continued to be a strong figure in American politics, with his influence spreading across the globe. In 2004 he visited Libya and the Sudan, urging Sudanese leaders to put an end to the civil war that had killed so many people.

See also Chavis, Benjamin Franklin, Jr.; Civil Rights Movement, U.S.; Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); King, Martin Luther, Jr.; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity); Politics in the United States; Rainbow Coalition; Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

Bibliography

Faw, Bob, and Nancy Skelton. Thunder in America. Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1986.

Frady, Marshall. Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson. New York: Random House, 1996.

Gibbons, Arnold. Race, Politics, and the White Media: The Jesse Jackson Campaigns. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1993.

Hatch, Roger D., and Frank E. Watkins, eds. Reverend Jesse L. Jackson: Straight from the Heart. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987.

Reynolds, Barbara. Jesse Jackson: The Man, the Movement, the Myth. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1975.

michael eric dyson (1996)
Updated by publisher 2005

Jesse Louis Jackson

Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson (born 1941), the most successful African American presidential candidate in U.S. history, received over three million votes in the 1984 election.

Jesse Louis Jackson was born on October 18, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, a city beset with the problems of racial segregation. From birth, Jackson faced his own personal brand of discrimination. As a young girl his mother, Helen Burns, became pregnant by her married next-door neighbor, Noah Robinson. The young boy was shunned and taunted by his neighbors and school classmates for being "a nobody who had no daddy." Instead of letting this adversity defeat him, Jackson developed his exceptional drive and understanding of those who are oppressed. His mother eventually married and became a successful hairdresser while his stepfather, a postal employee, adopted Jackson in 1957. With helpful advice from his maternal grandmother and his own desire to succeed, Jackson overcame his numerous childhood insecurities, finishing tenth in his high school class, even though he was actively involved in sports. His academic and athletic background earned Jackson a football scholarship at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Jackson, eager to get away from the Southern racial climate, traveled north only to find both open and covert discrimination at the university and in other parts of the city.

After several semesters Jackson decided to leave the University of Illinois, return to the South, and attend North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College (A&T) in Greensboro, an institution for African American students. Jackson again proved himself an able scholar and athlete. When his popularity on the campus led to his victory as student body president, Jackson did not take the responsibility lightly. As a college senior, he became a civil rights leader. Although he was not in Greensboro when the four African American freshman from A&T staged their famous Woolworth's sit-in in February 1960—the action which launched sit-down demonstrations throughout the South— Jackson actively encouraged his fellow students to continue their protests against racial injustice by staging repeated demonstrations and boycotts. Much of the open discrimination in the South fell before the onslaught of these student demonstrations.

Civil Rights Movement

In the spring of 1968 many of SCLC's officers— including Jackson—were drawn away from other civil rights protests by the Memphis, Tennessee, garbage collectors' strike. The situation in that city was especially tense because many African Americans who professed to be tired of passive resistance were willing and ready to fight. Tragically, King, in his attempt to prevent racial violence in that city, met a violent death by an assassin's bullet while standing on the balcony of his hotel room on April 4, 1968.

Some controversy surrounds the moments just after King was wounded. Jackson claimed on national television that he was the last person to talk to King and that he had held the dying leader in his arms, getting blood all over his shirt. The other men present unanimously agreed that this was not true, that Jackson had been in the parking lot facing King when he was shot and had neither climbed the steps to the balcony afterward nor gone to the hospital with King. Whatever the truth of the matter, Jackson's appearance on national television the next day with his bloodied turtleneck jersey vaulted him into national prominence. The image of Jackson and his bloody shirt brought the horror of the assassination into American homes. Jackson's ego, stirring oratory and charismatic presence caused the media to anoint him and not Ralph Abernathy, King's successor. Many observers believe that at this point, Jackson determined to become heir to King's position as the nation's foremost African American leader. In 1971, Jackson was suspended from the SCLC after its leaders claimed that he was using the organization to further his own personal agenda.

Operation PUSH

After his suspension from the SCLC, Jackson founded Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), an organization which essentially continued the work of Operation Breadbasket without SCLC's sponsorship. Standing in front of a picture of Dr. King, Jackson promised to begin "a rainbow coalition of blacks and whites gathered together to push for a greater share of economic and political power for all poor people in America." Throughout the decade, Jackson relentlessly spoke out against racism, militarism and the class divisions in American. He became a household name throughout the nation with his slogan "I Am Somebody".

By the mid 1970's, Jackson was a national figure. He realized that many of the problems plaguing the African American community stemmed from drug abuse and teen pregnancy and not simply economic deprivation. In 1976, Jackson created the PUSH-Excel, a program aimed at motivating children and teens to succeed. A fiery orator, Jackson traveled from city to city delivering his message of personal responsibility and self-worth to students: "You're not a man because you can kill somebody. You are not a man because you can make a baby … You're a man only if you can raise a baby, protect a baby and provide for a baby."

Jackson's support in the African American community allowed him to influence both local and national elections. Possibly the most important campaign in which he was involved was the election victory of the first African American mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington, in 1983. Washington's victory was attributed in part to Jackson's ability to convince over 100,000 African Americans, many of them youths, to register to vote. Jackson would also use his charisma to garner new voters during his 1984 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The Rainbow Coalition

Jackson's debut on the international scene occurred when President Jimmy Carter approved his visit to South Africa. Jackson attracted huge crowds at his rallies where he denounced apartheid, South Africa's oppressive system that prevented the black majority population from enjoying the rights and privileges of the white minority. Later in 1979, he toured the Middle East where he embraced Yassar Arafat, the then-exiled Palestinian leader. Jackson's embrace of a man considered a terrorist by the American government created yet another controversy. The result of these international excursions caused Jackson's fame and popularity to grow within the African American community.

As the 1980's began, Jackson moderated many of his political positions. He was no longer the flamboyant young man wearing long hair and gold medallions, but a more conservative, mature figure seeking ways to reform the Democratic party from within. He continued to advocate his "rainbow coalition" as a way for all Americans to improve the country.

After growing increasingly disenchanted with the existing political scene, Jackson decided that he would campaign against Walter Mondale and Gary Hart in the 1984 Democratic presidential primaries. His campaign centered on a platform of social programs for the poor and the disabled, alleviation of taxes for the poor, increased voting rights, effective affirmative action initiatives for the hiring of women and minorities, and improved civil rights for African Americans, poor whites, immigrants, homosexuals, Native Americans, and women. Jackson also took a stand on many world issues. He called for increased aid to African nations and more consideration of the rights of Arabs. His support for Arab nations and African American Muslims provoked much criticism, especially from Jewish voters. In early 1984, Jackson used his popularity in the Arab world to obtain the release of an American pilot, Lt. Robert Goodman, who had been shot down over Lebanon.

When he returned home, Jackson concentrated on securing the African American vote for his candidacy. He did not receive support from most senior African American politicians, who felt that Jackson's candidacy would cause disunity within the Democratic camp and benefit the Republicans. However, many poor African Americans enthusiastically supported him. Jackson received 3.5 million votes, and possibly 2 million of those voters were newly registered. He carried 60 congressional districts on a budget of less than $3 million. Although many Americans, both black and white, were decidedly opposed to Jackson, he earned grudging respect because his campaign fared better than most people had expected. When Jackson conceded defeat at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, much of America listened respectfully to his address. Although his campaign was unsuccessful, Jackson's powerful presence had broken new ground and involved more African Americans in the political process.

After the 1984 election, Jackson devoted his time between working for Operation PUSH in Chicago and his new National Rainbow Coalition in Washington DC. This national coalition was designed to be a force for reform within the Democratic party. It also provided Jackson with a platform from which to mount his 1988 presidential bid. Jackson's campaign received a much broader base of support than in 1984. His polished delivery, quick wit, and campaign experience helped him to gain many new supporters. Among the seven serious contenders for the Democratic nomination, Jackson finished second to Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis.

In 1990, Jackson was named one of two "shadow senators" to Congress from Washington DC to press for the district's statehood. Although the idea fizzled, it helped to keep Jackson in the public eye. In 1992, Jackson backed Democratic candidate Bill Clinton during the presidential campaign. He used his influence to urge African American voters to support Clinton. These efforts helped Clinton to win the election and return a Democrat to the White House for the first time in 12 years.

Critics often accuse Jackson of simply being a cheerleader of causes, a person who favors style over substance. Despite his unflagging energy and devotion to his causes, many felt that he was devoted only to his own self-aggrandizement. "This is the long-term pattern of Jackson's politics. He has always sought to operate and be recognized as a political insider, as a leader without portfolio or without accountability to any constituency that he claims to represent" wrote political critic Adolph Reed Jr. in the Progressive. "PUSH ran as a simple extension of his will and he has sought to ensure that the Rainbow Coalition would be the same kind of rubber stamp, a letterhead and front for his mercurial ambition."

Despite the criticism he has faced, Jackson continues to advocate for the rights of the downtrodden and challenge others to move beyond adversity. In 1995, Jackson wrote in Essence magazine, "People who are victimized may not be responsible for being down, but they must be responsible for getting up. Slave masters don't retire; people who are enslaved change their minds and choose to join the abolitionist struggle ….Change has always been led by those whose spirits were bigger than their circumstances … I do have hope. We have seen significant victories during the last 25 years."

Further Reading

Jackson's autobiography, Straight from the Heart, was published in 1987. There are a number of biographies of Jackson and several analytical studies of his presidential campaign. Two are Barbara A. Reynolds' sympathetic biography entitled Jesse Jackson: America's David (1985) and a critical work written by Thomas Landess and Richard Quinn, Jesse Jackson and the Politics of Race (1985). Several other biographies are Adolph L. Reed, The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon, a somewhat negative portrait (1986); Shield D. Collins, From Melting Pot to Rainbow Coalition (1986); and a children's book by Warren J. Halliburton, The Picture Life of Jesse Jackson (1984). Other works include Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson; James Haskins, I Am Somebody! A Biography of Jesse Jackson, and Political Parties and Elections in the United States Vol. 1, edited by L. Sandy Maisel. □

JACKSON, Jesse Louis

(b. 8 October 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina), civil rights and political activist, Baptist minister, and orator who became an influential member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during the 1960s.

Jesse Louis Burns was home-birthed to a gifted eighteen-year-old singer, Helen Burns. His father was Noah Louis Robinson, a married man living next door. Noah Robinson made a comfortable living as a cotton grader, while Helen Burns and her single mother, Matilda, had far less financial stability. Soon after Jackson's birth, his mother became a cosmetologist. In 1944 she married Charles Henry Jackson, a shoeshine attendant at a local barbershop, shortly before he entered the U.S. Army. After serving in the Army, Charles Jackson became a janitor and was soon employed in the post office building in Greenville. In 1957, when Jesse was a teenager, Charles Jackson formally adopted him.

As a child, Jackson delivered stove wood with an older relative, caddied at the Greenville Country Club, and waited tables at the airport restaurant. He was a good student and lettered in three sports at the all-black Sterling High School in Greenville. Jackson received a football scholarship at the University of Illinois but had difficulty making the team, became discouraged by racism, and lacked academic focus. He voluntarily left the University of Illinois at the end of his freshman year, transferring to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (North Carolina A & T) in Greensboro in 1960.

Jackson thrived at North Carolina A & T. He quarterbacked the football team, was elected student body president, joined the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, and was elected president of the North Carolina Intercollegiate Council on Human Rights. By 1963 Jackson was deeply involved in the civil rights movement. He participated in marches, sit-ins, and boycotts designed to break down racial barriers.

During his senior year in college, on 31 December 1962, Jackson married Jacqueline Lavinia Brown, who shared his background and many of his interests. They have five children. In 1964 Jackson completed his bachelor's degree in sociology and took a job as field representative for the southeast region of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). In the fall of 1964 he accepted a Rockefeller grant to attend the Chicago Theological Seminary at the University of Chicago. Jackson arrived in Chicago with a letter of introduction from the governor of North Carolina to Mayor Richard J. Daley. When Jackson asked Daley for a job, he was told that he must see his ward committeeman and do some precinct work to earn a city job. Jackson, who did not understand Chicago politics, was insulted. Instead, he supplemented his scholarship with part-time work for John Johnson, founder and publisher of Jet and Ebony magazines.

Chicago already had a host of strong African-American leaders when Jackson arrived in the city. William Dawson and his protégé, Ralph Metcalfe, were powerful "political-machine" politicians, and a bevy of ambitious African Americans, including Erwin France, Wilson Frost, August "Gus" Savage, and Richard Newhouse, were poised to climb the ladder of political power. Nor was there a shortage of independent African-American spokespeople. Bobby Rush of the Black Panthers and comedian Dick Gregory were among those already agitating for change.

African-American unemployment rates in Chicago, which hovered around 17 percent, and the rough-and-tumble of the city's politics complicated Jackson's rise to power. The crime syndicate had a strong presence throughout the city, particularly on the south side. "Fast Eddie" Vrdolyak and Vito Marzullo, among others, were understood to have close ties to syndicate boss Tony Accardo. Police officers "fished" for five dollars in cash in lieu of a traffic ticket, and the County Clerk of Courts, Les Beck, openly fixed court cases.

In March 1965, after six months of graduate studies, Jackson spent five days in Selma, Alabama, where he met Dr. Martin Luther King. Upon his return to Chicago, Jackson failed to submit required papers and attended classes irregularly. He did, however, participate in the activities of the Chicago Coordinating Council of Community Organizations and allied himself with the Reverend Clay Evans, pastor of the Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church. Reverend Evans had one of the largest congregations on Chicago's south side and was one of the few black ministers not allied with the Daley political machine.

Jackson registered for fall classes at Chicago Theological Seminary, but he was not devoted to his studies. After meeting King, Jackson focused his efforts on becoming a staff member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and bringing King's crusade to Chicago. Jackson worked with Evans to invite King to preach from the Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church pulpit in the spring of 1966. On 6 June 1966, after visiting Chicago, King offered Jackson a $3,000-per-year job with the SCLC to organize Operation Breadbasket. The project was based on a model developed by Reverend Leon Sullivan in Philadelphia in the early 1960s, and King hoped to expand the program to cities across the nation.

On 10 July 1966 King held a nonviolent rally at Soldier Field in Chicago that attracted 40,000 people. King demanded that Mayor Daley end "plantation politics" and housing discrimination. The rally was designed to be the start of a nonviolent crusade against de facto segregation in northern cities. But four days of rioting, arson, and looting broke out in the Lawndale neighborhood, and it was necessary to bring in the National Guard to stop the violence. On 5 August a march through Gage Park, a blue-collar suburb on Chicago's south side, turned violent. King was forced to leave Chicago with little to show for his effort.

Streetwise blacks felt that King had stirred up trouble but had done little to solve problems. In 1967 Daley won reelection with overwhelming support from African Americans. Dawson produced a 61,522 plurality for Daley in the five wards he controlled. Eighty-seven percent of black votes cast went to Daley.

When King left Chicago, Jackson vigorously undertook the task of organizing Operation Breadbasket. Just before Easter weekend 1967, Jackson announced that Operation Breadbasket would boycott Country Delight, a large local white-owned dairy that had no black employees. He enlisted more than 100 African-American ministers to instruct members of their congregations to boycott Country Delight products. After losing more than a half-million dollars, Country Delight hired forty-four African-American workers. Subsequently, Jackson won similar quick victories against the city's major soft drink suppliers.

Jackson then turned to the grocery industry. The Hi-Lo grocery stores soon agreed to provide 184 new entry-level jobs for black workers and to make more shelf space available for products made by minority-owned businesses. However, when Operation Breadbasket attempted to target the A & P chain and the strongly entrenched Red Rooster food stores, Jackson experienced problems. Despite four months of picketing, he made no progress. It was not until he enlisted the help of the Black Stone Rangers, a notorious youth gang known for engaging in extortion, that things changed.

Under the auspices of Jackson, members of the ruling body of the Black Stone Rangers were placed on Red Rooster's payroll as "no-show" security workers—a kind of protection racket scheme. Jackson also introduced his half-brother, Noah Robinson, Jr., to Black Stone Rangers' leader Jeff Fort. Robinson soon became closely linked with the Rangers, and along with Fort became a kingpin in drug-dealing. In 1983 both were arrested, convicted, and sent to prison.

When King was assassinated on 4 April 1968, the twenty-six-year-old Jackson was in Memphis with King supporting the sanitation workers strike. Jackson immediately returned to Chicago, where he marched into a City Council meeting wearing a blood-spattered sweater. As riots on the west side of Chicago burned dozens of blocks of stores and houses, Jackson addressed the council with a pledge to uphold King's nonviolent goals and practices.

On 30 June 1968 Evans and the singer Aretha Franklin's father, the Reverend C. L. Franklin, held an ordination service for Jackson at the Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago. Jackson then took the position of associate minister at that church. In 1969 Jackson received an honorary doctorate from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. In 1970 he received honorary doctorates from Oberlin College, Howard University, and North Carolina A & T.

As a result of agitation against prejudice and injustice at regular SCLC Saturday morning rallies at the Capital Theater on Chicago's South Halsted Street, Jackson became a familiar spokesperson for African-American causes.

In the fall of 1968 Republicans paid the Black Stone Rangers, who also called themselves the Black P. Stone Nation, to discourage African-American voting by holding a gang war in the Chicago neighborhood of Woodlawn. Nixon was elected president in part because low voter turn-out in black neighborhoods tipped the election to Republicans in Illinois. The number of votes cast in Chicago fell nearly 25 percent below 1964 levels. The number of blacks voting in Illinois that year was particularly low; unregistered potential black voters in Chicago exceeded the entire black population of Mississippi.

Under the auspices of Operation Breadbasket, in 1970 Jackson inaugurated Black Expo, a trade fair that featured the leaders, products, and services of African-American–owned businesses. While several thousand people attended the exhibits, entertainment, and presentations at Black Expo, Ralph Abernathy, president of the SCLC, became concerned about the poor accounting for the proceeds from the event. His concerns increased in 1971 when it was rumored that the Black Stone Rangers were paid a share of the profits for providing "security services." As a result of unpaid bills, Jackson was sued. In court he was unable to provide a plausible explanation for the shortage of funds.

In September 1971 Jackson incorporated the Expo independent of the SCLC, and that December resigned from the SCLC and formed Operation People United to Save Humanity (PUSH). Jackson soon expanded PUSH to the fourteen metropolitan areas of the United States with the largest African-American populations.

Following the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the party was pressured to revise its rules to broaden participation of minorities, women, and young people. In 1972 Jackson was part of the slate of Illinois delegates that successfully challenged the Richard J. Daley delegation to the Democratic convention on the grounds that Daley had violated the party's reformed rules in selecting his delegation.

Subsequently Jackson became one of the nation's most visible African-American spokespersons, frequently exhibiting his oratory skills before conventions and other large crowds. Although he failed to win many policy concessions, he kept issues of racial equality alive at a time when it was unpopular to speak up for the underrepresented. Jackson ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988. In 1989 Jackson moved to Washington, D.C. The following year the D.C. city council created two unpaid offices of "statehood senator"—popularly called "shadow senators"—to lobby the U.S. Congress for statehood for the District of Columbia. Jackson was elected to one of those positions. He was appointed U.S. special envoy for the promotion of democracy in Africa in 1997. His son, Jesse Jackson, Jr., was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1998.

Jackson, with Roger D. Hatch and Frank E. Watkins, eds., published Straight from the Heart (1987). He also wrote A Time to Speak: The Autobiography of the Reverend Jesse Jackson (1988). Biographies include Barbara Reynolds, Jesse Jackson: America's David (1985); Dorothy Chaplik, Up with Hope: A Biography of Jesse Jackson (1986); Elizabeth Colton, The Jackson Phenomenon: The Man, the Power, the Message (1989); Marshall Frady, Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson (1996); and Kenneth R. Timmerman, Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson (2002). Also of interest is Len O'Connor, Clout: Major Daley and His City (1975). Articles of interest include Gaylord Shaw, "A Clash Within: The Mixed Blessing of Rev. Jackson," Los Angeles Times (16 Dec. 1987); and Tom Brune and James Ylisela, Jr., "The Making of Jeff Fort," Chicago Magazine (Nov. 1988).

Keith McClellan