JESSE JACKSON, SR.
Name: Jesse Louis Jackson
Born: 8 October 1941 Greenville, South Carolina
Jesse Louis Jackson (Senior) (born October 8, 1941) is an American civil rights
activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic
presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as "shadow senator" for the
District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that
merged to form Rainbow/PUSH. Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. is his eldest son.
Jackson was born Jesse Louis Burns in Greenville, South Carolina, to Helen Burns.
Helen Burns was a 16-year old single mother when he was born. His biological
father, Noah Louis Robinson, a former professional boxer and a prominent figure
in the black community, was married to another woman when Jesse was born. He was
not involved in his son's life. In 1943, two years after Jesse's birth, his
mother married Charles Henry Jackson who would adopt Jesse 14 years later. Jesse
went on to take the surname of his stepfather.
Jackson attended Sterling High School, a segregated high school in Greenville,
where he was an outstanding student-athlete. Upon graduating in 1959, he
rejected a contract from a professional baseball team so that he could attend
the racially integrated University of Illinois on a football scholarship.
However, one year later, Jackson transferred to North Carolina A&T located in
Greensboro, North Carolina. There are differing accounts for the reasons behind
this transfer. Jackson claims that the change was based on the school's racial
biases which included his being unable to play as a quarterback despite being a
star quarterback at his high school as well as being demoted by his speech
professor as an alternate in a public speaking competition team despite the
support of his teammates who elected him a place on the team for his superior
abilities. ESPN.com reports a different story, however. Claims of racial
discrimination on the football team may be exaggerated because Illinois's
starting quarterback that year was an African American. In addition, Jackson
left Illinois at the end of his second semester after being placed on academic
probation. Following his graduation from A&T, Jackson attended the Chicago
Theological Seminary with the intent of becoming a minister, but dropped out in
1966 to focus full-time on the civil rights movement. (He would be ordained
in 1968, without a theological degree, and was awarded an honorary theological
doctorate from Chicago in 1990.)
Jackson is a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.
In 1965, he participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches organized by Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders in Alabama. When Jackson
returned from Selma, he threw himself into King’s effort to establish a
beachhead of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Chicago. In
1966, King selected Jackson to be head of the SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket in
Chicago, and promoted him to be the national director in 1967. Following the
example of Reverend Leon Sullivan of Philadelphia, a key goal of the new group
was to foster “selective buying” (boycotts) as a means to pressure white
businesses to hire blacks and purchase goods and services from black contractors.
One of Sullivan's precursors was Dr. T.R.M. Howard, a wealthy South Side doctor
and entrepreneur and key financial contributor to Operation Breadbasket. Before
he moved to Chicago from Mississippi in 1956, Howard, as the head of the
Regional Council of Negro Leadership, had successfully organized a boycott
against service stations that refused to provide restrooms for blacks
The Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks on a radio broadcast from the headquarters of
Operation PUSH, (People United to Save Humanity) at its annual convention. July,
1973. Photograph by John H. White.
Jackson was with King in Memphis, Tennessee when King was assassinated on April
4, 1968, the day after King's famous "I’ve been to the mountaintop" speech at
the Mason Temple.
Beginning in 1968, Jackson increasingly clashed with Ralph Abernathy, King's
successor as head of the national SCLC. In December, 1971, they had a complete
falling out. Abernathy suspended Jackson for “administrative improprieties and
repeated acts of violation of organizational policy.” Jackson resigned, called
together his allies, and Operation PUSH was born during the same month. The new
group was organized in the home of Dr. T.R.M. Howard who also became a member of
the board of directors and chair of the finance committee.
In 1984, Jackson organized the Rainbow Coalition, which later merged, in 1996,
with Operation PUSH. The newly formed Rainbow PUSH organization brought the
reverend's role as an important and effective organizer to the mainstream. Al
Sharpton also left the SCLC in protest to follow Jackson and formed the National
Youth Movement.
Jackson surrounded by marchers carrying signs advocating support for the Hawkins-Humphrey
Bill for full employment, January 1975.
During the 1980s, he achieved wide fame as an African American leader and as a
politician, as well as becoming a well-known spokesman for civil rights issues.
His influence extended to international matters in the 1980s and 1990s.
In 1983, Jackson traveled to Syria to secure the release of a captured American
pilot, Navy Lt. Robert Goodman who was being held by the Syrian government.
Goodman had been shot down over Lebanon while on a mission to bomb Syrian
positions in that country. After a dramatic personal appeal that Jackson made to
Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, Goodman was released. Initially, the Reagan
administration was skeptical about Jackson's trip to Syria. However, after
Jackson secured Goodman's release, United States President Ronald Reagan
welcomed both Jackson and Goodman to the White House on January 4, 1984. This
helped to boost Jackson's popularity as an American patriot and served as a
springboard for his 1984 presidential run. In June 1984, Jackson negotiated the
release of twenty-two Americans being held in Cuba after an invitation by Cuban
president Fidel Castro.
He caused a stir in 1995 when he wrote to the FOX network protesting an episode
of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in which the "White Ranger" said "White Power"
as a battle-cry. Jackson later retracted his statement, but FOX nonetheless
censored the line in future airings.
He traveled to Kenya in 1997 to meet with Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi as
United States President Bill Clinton's special envoy for democracy to promote
free and fair elections. In April 1999, during the Kosovo War, Jackson traveled
to Belgrade to negotiate the release of three U.S. POWs captured on the
Macedonia border while patrolling with a UN peacekeeping unit. He met with the
then-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević, who later agreed to release the
three men.
His international efforts continued into the 2000s. On February 15, 2003,
Jackson spoke in front of over an estimated one million people in Hyde Park,
London at the culmination of the anti-war demonstration against the imminent
invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and the United Kingdom. In November 2004, Jackson
visited senior politicians and community activists in Northern Ireland in an
effort to encourage better cross-community relations and rebuild the peace
process and restore the governmental institutions of the Belfast Agreement. In
August 2005, Jackson traveled to Venezuela to meet Venezuelan President Hugo
Chávez, following controversial remarks by televangelist Pat Robertson in which
he implied that Chávez should be assassinated. Jackson condemned Robertson's
remarks as immoral. After meeting with Chávez and addressing the Venezuelan
Parliament, Jackson said that there was no evidence that Venezuela posed a
threat to the U.S. Jackson also met representatives from the Afro Venezuela and
indigenous communities.
According to an AP-AOL "Black Voices" poll in Feb 2006, Jackson was voted "the
most important black leader" with 15% of the vote. He was followed by
Condoleezza Rice with 11%.
Name: Jesse Louis Jackson
Born: 8 October 1941 Greenville, South Carolina
Jesse Louis Jackson (Senior) (born October 8, 1941) is an American civil rights
activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic
presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as "shadow senator" for the
District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that
merged to form Rainbow/PUSH. Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. is his eldest son.
Jackson was born Jesse Louis Burns in Greenville, South Carolina, to Helen Burns.
Helen Burns was a 16-year old single mother when he was born. His biological
father, Noah Louis Robinson, a former professional boxer and a prominent figure
in the black community, was married to another woman when Jesse was born. He was
not involved in his son's life. In 1943, two years after Jesse's birth, his
mother married Charles Henry Jackson who would adopt Jesse 14 years later. Jesse
went on to take the surname of his stepfather.
Jackson attended Sterling High School, a segregated high school in Greenville,
where he was an outstanding student-athlete. Upon graduating in 1959, he
rejected a contract from a professional baseball team so that he could attend
the racially integrated University of Illinois on a football scholarship.
However, one year later, Jackson transferred to North Carolina A&T located in
Greensboro, North Carolina. There are differing accounts for the reasons behind
this transfer. Jackson claims that the change was based on the school's racial
biases which included his being unable to play as a quarterback despite being a
star quarterback at his high school as well as being demoted by his speech
professor as an alternate in a public speaking competition team despite the
support of his teammates who elected him a place on the team for his superior
abilities. ESPN.com reports a different story, however. Claims of racial
discrimination on the football team may be exaggerated because Illinois's
starting quarterback that year was an African American. In addition, Jackson
left Illinois at the end of his second semester after being placed on academic
probation. Following his graduation from A&T, Jackson attended the Chicago
Theological Seminary with the intent of becoming a minister, but dropped out in
1966 to focus full-time on the civil rights movement. (He would be ordained
in 1968, without a theological degree, and was awarded an honorary theological
doctorate from Chicago in 1990.)
Jackson is a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.
In 1965, he participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches organized by Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders in Alabama. When Jackson
returned from Selma, he threw himself into King’s effort to establish a
beachhead of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Chicago. In
1966, King selected Jackson to be head of the SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket in
Chicago, and promoted him to be the national director in 1967. Following the
example of Reverend Leon Sullivan of Philadelphia, a key goal of the new group
was to foster “selective buying” (boycotts) as a means to pressure white
businesses to hire blacks and purchase goods and services from black contractors.
One of Sullivan's precursors was Dr. T.R.M. Howard, a wealthy South Side doctor
and entrepreneur and key financial contributor to Operation Breadbasket. Before
he moved to Chicago from Mississippi in 1956, Howard, as the head of the
Regional Council of Negro Leadership, had successfully organized a boycott
against service stations that refused to provide restrooms for blacks
The Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks on a radio broadcast from the headquarters of
Operation PUSH, (People United to Save Humanity) at its annual convention. July,
1973. Photograph by John H. White.
Jackson was with King in Memphis, Tennessee when King was assassinated on April
4, 1968, the day after King's famous "I’ve been to the mountaintop" speech at
the Mason Temple.
Beginning in 1968, Jackson increasingly clashed with Ralph Abernathy, King's
successor as head of the national SCLC. In December, 1971, they had a complete
falling out. Abernathy suspended Jackson for “administrative improprieties and
repeated acts of violation of organizational policy.” Jackson resigned, called
together his allies, and Operation PUSH was born during the same month. The new
group was organized in the home of Dr. T.R.M. Howard who also became a member of
the board of directors and chair of the finance committee.
In 1984, Jackson organized the Rainbow Coalition, which later merged, in 1996,
with Operation PUSH. The newly formed Rainbow PUSH organization brought the
reverend's role as an important and effective organizer to the mainstream. Al
Sharpton also left the SCLC in protest to follow Jackson and formed the National
Youth Movement.
Jackson surrounded by marchers carrying signs advocating support for the Hawkins-Humphrey
Bill for full employment, January 1975.
During the 1980s, he achieved wide fame as an African American leader and as a
politician, as well as becoming a well-known spokesman for civil rights issues.
His influence extended to international matters in the 1980s and 1990s.
In 1983, Jackson traveled to Syria to secure the release of a captured American
pilot, Navy Lt. Robert Goodman who was being held by the Syrian government.
Goodman had been shot down over Lebanon while on a mission to bomb Syrian
positions in that country. After a dramatic personal appeal that Jackson made to
Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, Goodman was released. Initially, the Reagan
administration was skeptical about Jackson's trip to Syria. However, after
Jackson secured Goodman's release, United States President Ronald Reagan
welcomed both Jackson and Goodman to the White House on January 4, 1984. This
helped to boost Jackson's popularity as an American patriot and served as a
springboard for his 1984 presidential run. In June 1984, Jackson negotiated the
release of twenty-two Americans being held in Cuba after an invitation by Cuban
president Fidel Castro.
He caused a stir in 1995 when he wrote to the FOX network protesting an episode
of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in which the "White Ranger" said "White Power"
as a battle-cry. Jackson later retracted his statement, but FOX nonetheless
censored the line in future airings.
He traveled to Kenya in 1997 to meet with Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi as
United States President Bill Clinton's special envoy for democracy to promote
free and fair elections. In April 1999, during the Kosovo War, Jackson traveled
to Belgrade to negotiate the release of three U.S. POWs captured on the
Macedonia border while patrolling with a UN peacekeeping unit. He met with the
then-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević, who later agreed to release the
three men.
His international efforts continued into the 2000s. On February 15, 2003,
Jackson spoke in front of over an estimated one million people in Hyde Park,
London at the culmination of the anti-war demonstration against the imminent
invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and the United Kingdom. In November 2004, Jackson
visited senior politicians and community activists in Northern Ireland in an
effort to encourage better cross-community relations and rebuild the peace
process and restore the governmental institutions of the Belfast Agreement. In
August 2005, Jackson traveled to Venezuela to meet Venezuelan President Hugo
Chávez, following controversial remarks by televangelist Pat Robertson in which
he implied that Chávez should be assassinated. Jackson condemned Robertson's
remarks as immoral. After meeting with Chávez and addressing the Venezuelan
Parliament, Jackson said that there was no evidence that Venezuela posed a
threat to the U.S. Jackson also met representatives from the Afro Venezuela and
indigenous communities.
According to an AP-AOL "Black Voices" poll in Feb 2006, Jackson was voted "the
most important black leader" with 15% of the vote. He was followed by
Condoleezza Rice with 11%.