(Traces the life and career of the charismatic Black Ameri...)
Traces the life and career of the charismatic Black American leader and his fight for the rights and dignity of Blacks in America, and briefly discusses his 1984 campaign for the Democratic nomination for president
Jesse Louis Jackson is an American civil rights activist, Baptist minister, and politician.
Background
Jackson was born in October 8, 1941in Greenville, South Carolina, United States to Helen Burns (1924–2015), a 16-year-old high school student, and her 33-year-old married neighbor, Noah Louis Robinson. Robinson was a former professional boxer who was an employee of a textile brokerage and a well-known figure in the black community. One year after Jesse's birth, his mother married Charles Henry Jackson, a post office maintenance worker who later adopted the boy. Jesse was given his stepfather's name in the adoption, but as he grew up, he also maintained a close relationship with Robinson. He considered both men to be his father. Although the young Jackson was quite aware of poverty and illegitimacy, his mother, grandmother, and stepfather were always able to see to family needs. As a young child, Jackson was taunted by the other children regarding his out-of-wedlock birth, and has said these experiences helped motivate him to succeed.
Education
He attended the racially segregated Sterling High School in Greenville, where he was elected student class president, finished tenth in his class, and earned letters in baseball, football and basketball. 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. He dropped out in 1966, three classes short of earning his master's degree, to focus full-time on the Civil Rights Movement.
Career
In 1963 Jackson organized numerous marches, sit-ins, and mass arrests to press for the desegregation of local restaurants and theaters.
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.
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.
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.
He was ordained a minister in 1968, and in 2000, was awarded his Master of Divinity Degree based on his previous credits earned, plus his life experience and subsequent work.
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.
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).
The 1976 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
His economic boycotts were criticized by some businessmen as extortion and by some reformers for lacking follow-through.
Jackson offended some Americans by negotiating with the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), Fidel Castro, and the Marxist Sandinista government of Nicaragua.
He has a flair for the dramatic that infuses an increasingly tedious political process with life.
Achievements
Ebony Magazine named Jackson to its "100 most influential black Americans" list in 1971.
In 1979, Jackson received the Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged.
In 1989, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.
In 1991, Jackson received the American Whig-Cliosophic Society's James Madison Award for Distinguished Public Service.
Clinton awarded Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest honor bestowed on civilians in August 2000.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante included Jackson on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
In 2008, Jackson was presented with an Honorary Fellowship from Edge Hill University.
In an AP-AOL "Black Voices" poll in February 2006, Jackson was voted "the most important black leader".
Jackson inherited the title of the High Prince of the Agni people of Côte d'Ivoire from Michael Jackson. In August 2009, he was crowned Prince Côte Nana by Amon N'Douffou V, King of Krindjabo, who rules more than a million Agni tribespeople.
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’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.
Politics
Jackson was initially critical of the "Third Way" or more moderate policies of Bill Clinton, so much so that, according to journalist Peter Beinart, Clinton was "petrified about a primary challenge from" Jackson in the 1996 election. However, he became a key ally in gaining African American support for Clinton and eventually became a close adviser and friend of the Clinton family. In March 2007, Jackson declared his support for then-Senator Barack Obama in the 2008 democratic primaries. Jackson later criticized Obama in 2007 for "acting like he's white, " in response to the Jena 6 beating case. Jackson was expressing his disappointment in Obama'sFather's Day speech chastisement of black fathers. Subsequent to his Fox News interview, Jackson apologized and reiterated his support for Obama. Jackson has commended Obama's 2012 decision to support gay marriage and has compared the fight for same-sex marriage to fight against slavery and the anti-miscegenation laws that once prevented interracial marriage. He would be in favor of federal legislation extending marriage rights to gays, because he feels that if this issue is left up to the states, some states will continue to deny gays equal protection and equal rights.
Views
Quotations:
“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. ”
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. ”
Membership
He is the founder of the organizations that merged to form Rainbow/PUSH.
On Memorial Day, May 25, 1987, Jesse was made a Master Mason on Sight by Grand Master Senter of the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Illinois; thereby making him a Prince Hall Freemason.
Personality
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.
Connections
Jackson married Jacqueline Lavinia Brown (born 1944) on December 31, 1962, and together they have five children.
