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(b. October 8, 1941, Greenville, S.C.), African American minister, founder
of Operation PUSH and the National Rainbow Coalition, and twice candidate
for president of the United States.
One of America's best-known and respected black leaders, Jesse Jackson
appeared on the national scene following the 1968 assassination of his
mentor, Martin Luther King Jr. In the years since, Jackson has continued to
work for racial and economic justice, international peace, and empowerment
of society's outsiders. With projects like Operation Breadbasket, Operation
PUSH, and the Rainbow Coalition, as well as political action - particularly
his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president in 1984 and 1988 -
Jackson has attracted fame, admiration, and criticism. For his work on
behalf of racial and social justice, Jackson has been awarded at least 40
honorary degrees, and for ten years he has been listed among the top ten men
most admired by Americans.
Despite all of Jackson's achievements, however, some commentators and
biographers admit to a sense of disappointment because of what he has not
accomplished. Born to Helen Burns, an unwed teenaged mother - who was
herself the child of an unwed teenaged mother - Jackson's childhood was
marked by feelings of isolation and difference, according to his
biographers. His biological father, Noah Robinson, was one of Greenville's
most prosperous black citizens, while Jackson, along with his mother and
grandmother, lived in relative poverty. Robinson's initial refusal to
acknowledge Jackson (who took the name of his stepfather, Charles H.
Jackson, upon being adopted by him in 1957) changed as Jesse grew into a
promising athlete and scholar. Despite the material and emotional
deprivations of Jackson's early life, one of his friends told biographer
Marshall Frady, "Not only does Jesse believe in God, but Jesse believes God
believes in him."
This self-assurance and sense of destiny was first tested at college. A
football scholarship to the University of Illinois brought Jackson north in
1959, but after being denied the coveted quarterback position he returned
south, to the historically black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical
State College. There he fulfilled his athletic and leadership potential,
serving as the student body president as well as quarterback of the football
team. It was also while he was at college that Jackson became involved in
the Civil Rights Movement, first by protesting the whites-only local library
system, then later by leading demonstrations against segregated restaurants,
theaters, and hotels.
By the time Jackson graduated in 1964, he had decided to become a minister.
Accepting a scholarship from the Chicago Theological Seminary, Jackson
returned to Illinois, this time with a family - he had married Jacqueline
Brown the same year. In Chicago, Jackson worked hard at his studies, and at
first kept his distance from the local civil rights organizations, many of
which were trying to recruit him as a potential leader. All that changed,
according to Frady, when Jackson went to Selma, Alabama, in March, 1965, to
take part in a historic civil rights march led by Martin Luther King Jr.,
president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Leading a
group of fellow divinity students, Jackson arrived in Selma, met King, and
made himself noticed - as much for his obvious ambition as for his leadership skills.
Before long, Jackson was working for SCLC. By 1966 he had left seminary to
head the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket, an organization dedicated
to improving the financial position of the black community; in 1967 he
became its national chairman. Blessed with charm, energy, and a fiery
oratorical style, Jackson soon found success and local fame as the man who
pressured several large Chicago organizations into hiring more African
Americans. Relations between Jackson and the SCLC leadership, which had been
stormy at times due to competition among strong personalities, deteriorated
further after King's assassination in April 1968. Accused by some of
exaggerating his closeness to the slain civil rights hero, Jackson
nevertheless quickly became a national figure, assumed by some to be King's
natural heir. After the SCLC board selected Ralph David Abernathy as its
next president, Jackson continued with the organization, even serving as
mayor of the ill-fated antipoverty demonstration, Resurrection City. In 1971
he left in order to begin a new project called Operation PUSH.
PUSH, which stands for People United to Serve Humanity, grew out of
Operation Breadbasket and continued many of its themes, especially that of
economic empowerment. Embellishing a line from one of King's speeches,
Jackson provided PUSH with a catchy and compelling motto: "I Am Somebody."
Jackson began attracting large and enthusiastic crowds to his weekly PUSH
prayer meetings. As his influence and celebrity grew, so did his family,
which soon included five children. With the addition of PUSH-Excel, a branch
devoted to educational issues, and with a new emphasis on voter registration
drives, Jackson became a powerful voice for minorities and the poor,
appearing often in the national media and speaking on behalf of political candidates.
In 1983 Jackson declared himself a candidate for the presidential nomination
of the Democratic Party. Emphasizing his compassion and fervor on behalf of
the poor, the marginalized, and the downtrodden, he pledged to build a
"rainbow coalition." Jackson had already been criticized for his support of
the Palestinian Liberation Organization during a trip to North Africa and
the Middle East in 1979. During the race for the 1984 election he faced
renewed charges of anti-Semitism - for his association with the
controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and for his reference
to New York City as "Hymietown." Jackson apologized repeatedly for this
remark, and has since emphasized his distaste for all forms of bigotry, but
the stigma remains.
Caught between the high expectations of the black community and the fear and
indifference of the white mainstream, Jackson did not win the nomination in
1984. But he did amass far more delegates than anyone had predicted. In his
speech before the Democratic convention, Jackson's dramatic call to "Keep
Hope Alive" electrified the crowd, and some commentators later called it the
best political speech of the century. In 1986 Jackson founded the National
Rainbow Coalition. Two years later he again sought the presidency and failed
to be nominated, although this time he won several major primaries and, for
a while, was the front-runner. Although nominee Michael Dukakis did not ask
him to be his running mate, despite that suggestion from several polls and
advisers, Jackson worked hard to support the Democratic ticket, which
eventually lost to George Bush and Dan Quayle. Beyond their simple success
or failure, Jackson's presidential runs were significant: through them, he
galvanized black voters, millions of whom he had helped to register prior to
the election; he raised important social and racial issues on the national
level; and, for the first time, he introduced the possibility that an
African American could win the nation's highest office.
In the decade following the 1988 election, Jackson continued in leadership
roles, although he has passed the political torch to his son, Jesse Jr., who
is a Congressman from Illinois. Despite the urging of supporters, Jackson
chose not to run for mayor of Washington, D.C., where he and his family had
moved in 1989. He left PUSH the same year. In 1990 Jackson began serving as
"statehood senator," a position created to lobby for statehood for the
District of Columbia. Jackson also resumed the unaligned diplomacy he had
begun in 1979, and that he had continued in 1983 when he had won the release
of a black prisoner of war who was being detained in Syria. In 1991,
Jackson's intervention was responsible for the release of hundreds of
hostages being held by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In 1996, he returned
to Chicago to resume leadership of PUSH.
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