Jeese jackson biography

October 8, 1941

In 1966, Jesse Jackson began to lead Operation Breadbasket, a Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) program in Chicago. Often seen as Martin Luther King’s protégé, Jackson quickly earned a place among King’s inner circle. Although King found Jackson’s ambition troubling at times, SCLC executive vice president Andrew Young called Jackson “a natural-born leader” (Frontline, “Interview with Andrew Young”).

Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina, on 8 October 1941 to an unmarried, teenage mother. Jackson was both an honor student and class president in high school, and he received an athletic scholarship to the University of Illinois in 1959. He moved back to South Carolina after one year, however, transferring to Greensboro’s North Carolina A & T College. In Greensboro, he became active in the civil rights movement, joining the local Congress of Racial Equality chapter and participating in sit-ins and demonstrations.  Aware of SCLC’s work at the time, a precocious Jackson wrote King: “Dear Sir, I don’t think you’ll ever bring God to Albany, Georgia. For He’s wise enough to wait till E=MC² brings change there. Best of luck, though” (Jackson, 7 August 1962).

In 1964, Jackson graduated from college and moved to Chicago on a Rockefeller grant to study at Chicago Theological Seminary. In March 1965, he organized a group of fellow students to drive down to Selma, Alabama, answering King’s call for supporters of the local voting rights campaign. Before returning to Chicago, Jackson asked Ralph Abernathy for a staff position with SCLC in order to lay the groundwork for a Chicago Campaign.  Although King hardly knew Jackson, he took a chance and hired him.

In January 1966, King moved to Chicago to launch SCLC’s northern movement. Jackson soon dropped out of seminary to help King full time, becoming the Chicago coordinato

Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. (born October 8, 1941) is an Americanchurch minister, activist and politician. Jackson was born Jesse Louis Burns, in Greenville, South Carolina. His mother, Helen Burns, was 16 years old at the time he was born. She never married his father, Noah Louis Robinson. When Jackson was two, his mother married Charles Jackson. Jesse was raised by his grandmother Matilda until he was 13. In 1957, he returned home when his step-father adopted him.

Early life and civil rights

After he graduated from high school, Jackson had an offer to play professional baseball from the Chicago White Sox. He also received a scholarship to play college football at the University of Illinois, which he accepted. He later transferred to North Carolina A&T. He was one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s main organizers in Chicago for the Southern Christian Leadership Conferences. After King was shot, Jackson formed several civil rights organizations of his own. Two of these were Operation PUSH and the Rainbow Coalition. Jackson was also active in civil rights movements outside the United States. He also served as a Baptist minister.

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In May 1983, Jackson became the first African-American man since Reconstruction to address a joint session of the Alabama Legislature, where he said it was "about time we forgot about black and white and started talking about employed and unemployed". Art Harris saw Jackson as "testing the waters for a black presidential candidacy down South". Jackson's address to the National Congress of American Indians and touring of southern Texas to test his appeal among Hispanics made people think that he would run for president.

Jackson ran for President in 1984 and 1988, coming in second in the 1988 Democratic party. Both times, he ran on

In his quest for social, racial and economic justice, Rev. Jesse Jackson has been civil rights activist, presidential candidate, and international hostage negotiator. While a student at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College in 1963, Jackson led protests to desegregate theaters and restaurants in Greensboro. He went to Selma, Alabama after "Bloody Sunday" in 1965, met Martin Luther King, Jr. and joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). By 1966 Jackson had become head of the Chicago Chapter of SCLC's Operation Breadbasket. He also helped establish the Chicago Freedom Movement to work for open housing and school desegregation. A year later he was appointed the national director of Operation Breadbasket. In 1971 he left SCLC to establish Operation PUSH - People United to Save Humanity. Through that organization he has orchestrated economic boycotts of major corporations that discriminate against blacks. His National Rainbow Coalition established in the mid-1980s brought together diverse people to advocate for human rights. Jackson eventually merged that organization with PUSH. In 1984 Jackson made an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. He ran and lost again in 1988, but at one point took the lead in popular votes and delegates. Jackson has used his gifts as a persuasive speaker to gain the freedom of Navy Pilot Robert Goodman (1984), hundreds held in Kuwait by Saddam Hussein (1991) and three U.S. prisoners of war held by Yugoslav President Slobadan Milosevic (1999). For these and other efforts, President Bill Clinton awarded Jackson the Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given to civilians in the United States.

Jesse Louis Burns grew up poor in a South Carolina sharecropping family. At 15 he took the last name of his stepfather. He married Jacqueline Lavinia Brown in December 1962 and two years later graduated from predominately black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College. Jackson studied a

American Baptist minister, activist, and politician (born 1941)

This article is about the civil rights activist. For his son, a former U.S. Representative from Illinois, see Jesse Jackson Jr. For other uses, see Jesse Jackson (disambiguation).

Jesse Louis Jackson (néBurns; born October 8, 1941) is an American civil rightsactivist, politician, and ordained Baptist minister. Beginning as a young protégé of Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement, Jackson maintained his status as a prominent civil rights leader throughout his political and theological career for over seven decades. He served from 1991 to 1997 as a shadow delegate and senator for the District of Columbia. Jackson is the father of former U.S. RepresentativeJesse Jackson Jr. and current U.S. Representative Jonathan Jackson.

Jackson began his activism in the 1960s and founded the organizations that merged to form the Rainbow/PUSH organization. Extending his activism into international matters beginning in the 1980s, he became a critic of the Reagan administration and launched a presidential campaign in 1984. Initially seen as a fringe candidate, Jackson finished in third place for the Democratic nomination, behind former Vice President Walter Mondale and Senator Gary Hart. He continued his activism for the next three years, and mounted a second bid for president in 1988. Exceeding expectations once again, Jackson finished as the runner-up to Governor of MassachusettsMichael Dukakis.

Jackson never sought the presidency again, but was elected to the United States Senate in 1990 for the District of Columbia, for which he would serve one term as a shadow delegate during the Bush and Clinton administrations. Initially a critic of President Bill Clinton, he became a supporter. Jackson hosted Both Sides with Jesse Jackson on CNN from 1992 to 2000. He has been a critic of police brutality, the Republican Party, and conservative policies, and