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Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. (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.
 Early
life
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.
Education
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.
Civil rights
leader
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
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 his 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.
International
activities
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%.
Presidential
candidate
1984 election
In 1984, Jackson became the second African American (after Shirley Chisholm) to
mount a nationwide campaign for President of the United States, running as a
Democrat.
In the primaries, Jackson, who had been written off by pundits as a fringe
candidate with little chance at winning the nomination, surprised many when he took
third place behind Senator Gary Hart and former Vice President Walter Mondale, who
eventually won the nomination. Jackson garnered 3,282,431 primary votes, or 18.2
percent of the total, in 1984, and won five primaries and caucuses, including
Louisiana, the District of Columbia, South Carolina, Virginia, and one of two
separate contests in Mississippi.
As he had gained 21% of the popular vote but only 8% of delegates, he afterwards
complained that he had been handicapped by party rules. While Mondale (in the words
of his aides) was determined to establish a precedent with his vice presidential
candidate by picking a woman or visible minority, Jackson criticized the screening
process as a "p.r. parade of personalities". He also mocked Mondale, saying that
Hubert Humphrey was the "last significant politician out of the St.
Paul–Minneapolis" area.
1988
election
Four years later, in 1988, Jackson once again offered himself as a candidate for
the Democratic Party presidential nomination. This time, his successes in the past
made him a more credible candidate, and he was both better financed and better
organized. Although most people did not seem to believe he had a serious chance at
winning, Jackson once again exceeded expectations as he more than doubled his
previous results, prompting R.W. Apple of the New York Times to call 1988 "the Year
of Jackson".
He captured 6.9 million votes and won 11 contests; seven primaries (Alabama, the
District of Columbia, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Puerto Rico and Virginia)
and four caucuses (Delaware, Michigan, South Carolina and Vermont).. Jackson also
scored March victories in Alaska's caucuses and Texas's local conventions, despite
losing the Texas primary. Some news accounts credit him with 13 wins. Briefly,
after he won 55% of the vote in the Michigan Democratic caucus, he was considered
the frontrunner for the nomination, as he surpassed all the other candidates in
total number of pledged delegates.
In early 1988, Jackson organized a rally at the former American Motors assembly
plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin, approximately two weeks after new owner Chrysler
announced it would close the plant by the end of the year. In his speech, Jackson
spoke out against Chrysler's decision, stating "We have to put the focus on
Kenosha, Wisconsin, as the place, here and now, where we draw the line to end
economic violence!" and compared the workers' fight to that of the civil rights
movement in Selma, Alabama. As a result, the UAW Local 72 union voted to endorse
his candidacy, even against the rules of the UAW. (Dudley 1994) However, Jackson's
campaign suffered a significant setback less than two weeks later when he was
defeated handily in the Wisconsin primary by Michael Dukakis. Jackson's showing
among white voters in Wisconsin was significantly higher than in his 1984 run, but
was also noticeably lower than pre-primary polling had indicated it would be. The
discrepancy has been cited as an example of the so-called "Bradley effect".
Jackson's campaign had also been interrupted by allegations regarding his
half-brother Noah Robinson, Jr.'s criminal activity. Jackson had to answer frequent
questions about his brother, who was often referred to as "the Billy Carter of the
Jackson campaign".
On the heels of Jackson's narrow loss to Dukakis the day before in Colorado,
Dukakis' comfortable win in Wisconsin terminated Jackson's momentum. The victory
established Dukakis as the clear Democratic frontrunner, and he went on to claim
the party's nomination, but lost the general election in November.
Campaign
platform
In both races, Jackson ran on what many considered to be a very liberal platform.
Declaring that he wanted to create a "Rainbow Coalition" of various minority
groups, including African Americans, Hispanics, Arab-Americans, Asian Americans,
Native Americans, family farmers, the poor and working class, and homosexuals, as
well as white progressives who fit into none of those categories, Jackson ran on a
platform that included:
creating a Works Progress Administration-style program to rebuild America's
infrastructure and provide jobs to all Americans,
reprioritizing the War on Drugs to focus less on mandatory minimum sentences for
drug users (which he views as racially biased) and more on harsher punishments for
money-laundering bankers and others who are part of the "supply" end of "supply and
demand"
reversing Reaganomics-inspired tax cuts for the richest ten percent of Americans
and using the money to finance social welfare programs
cutting the budget of the Department of Defense by as much as fifteen percent over
the course of his administration
declaring Apartheid-era South Africa to be a rogue nation
instituting an immediate nuclear freeze and beginning disarmament negotiations with
the Soviet Union
giving reparations to descendants of black slaves
supporting family farmers by reviving many of Roosevelt's New Deal–era farm
programs
creating a single-payer system of universal health care
ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment
increasing federal funding for lower-level public education and providing free
community college to all
applying stricter enforcement of the Voting Rights Act and
supporting the formation of a Palestinian state.
With the exception of a resolution to implement sanctions against South Africa for
its apartheid policies, none of these positions made it into the party's platform
in either 1984 or 1988.
Abortion
Although Jackson was one of the most liberal members of the Democratic Party, his
views on abortion were originally more in line with anti-abortion views. Jackson
once endorsed the Hyde Amendment, which bars the funding of abortions for
low-income women through the federal Medicaid program. He wrote an article
published in a 1977 National Right to Life Committee News report:
"There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of higher order than the
right to life... that was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the
existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and
therefore outside your right to be concerned. What happens to the mind of a person,
and the moral fabric of a nation, that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby
without a pang of conscience? What kind of a person and what kind of a society will
we have twenty years hence if life can be taken so casually? It is that question,
the question of our attitude, our value system, and our mind-set with regard to the
nature and worth of life itself that is the central question confronting mankind.
Failure to answer that question affirmatively may leave us with a hell right here
on earth."
However, since then, Jackson has adopted an openly pro-choice view, believing the
right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy is fundamental and should not be
infringed in any way by the government.
He ran for office as "Shadow Senator" for the District of Columbia in 1991, and
served as such through 1997 when he did not run for re-election. This non-voting
position in the Senate was created primarily as a post to lobby for statehood for
the District of Columbia.
2004
presidential election
Jackson gathered information and support to investigate the 2004 U.S. presidential
election controversy, particularly the voting results in Ohio and its recount. He
called for a congressional debate on the matter, asking for a fair count and
national voting standards, saying that the elections in the United States are each
run with different standards by different states with partisan tricks, racial bias,
and widespread incompetence and are an open scandal.
Jackson said that he held some hope that the election could be overturned, although
he admitted that that was very doubtful. Jackson compared the voting irregularities
of Ohio to that of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, saying that if Ohio
were Ukraine, the U.S. presidential election would not have been certified by the
international community. Jackson called Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell
inappropriately partisan and said that Blackwell may have been pressured by
President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney to deliver Ohio to the
Republican Party.
Based on information obtained in hearings held by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and
discovered during a flawed recount of the Ohio presidential vote called for by
Green Party candidate David Cobb and Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik,
Jackson suggested that the Ohio voting machines were "rigged" and that some
African-Americans were forced to stand in line for six hours in the rain before
voting. When asked for evidence, Jackson did not give facts, but replied, "Based on
distrusting the system, lack of paper trails, the anomaly of the exit polls."
On January 6, 2005, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff released a
100 page report on the Ohio election. This challenge to the Ohio election was
rejected by a vote of 74-1 by the United States Senate and 267-31 in the House.
Many high-ranking Democrats chose to distance themselves from this debate,
including John Kerry, despite Jesse Jackson personally asking Kerry for help. The
call for election reform legislation and voting rights protection nonetheless
continued from various citizen groups.
Current
activities
While Jackson was initially critical of the "Third Way" or more moderate policies
of Bill Clinton, he became a key ally in gaining African American support for
Clinton and eventually became a close advisor and friend of the Clinton family.
Clinton awarded Jackson the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest honor bestowed
on civilians. His son, Jesse Jackson, Jr., also emerged as a political figure,
becoming a member of the United States House of Representatives from Illinois.
Jackson is also known as a passionate orator, in the tradition of Southern U.S. and
African American Protestant preaching. In 2003, Jackson surprised many observers by
declining to endorse the campaigns of either Al Sharpton or former Senator Carol
Moseley Braun, the two African American candidates, in the race for the Democratic
Party's 2004 presidential nomination. Instead, Jackson remained largely silent
about his preference in the race until late in the primary season, when he allowed
Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, another presidential candidate,
to speak at a Rainbow/PUSH forum on March 31, 2004. Although he did not explicitly
voice an endorsement of Rep. Kucinich, Jackson described Kucinich as "assuming the
burden of saying 'you make the most sense, but you can't win.'" He also writes for
The Progressive Populist.
In 2005, he was enlisted as part of the United Kingdom's "Operation Black Vote", a
campaign to encourage more of Britain's ethnic minorities to vote in political
elections ahead of the May 2005 General Election. Also in early 2005, Jackson
visited the parents of Terri Schiavo and their supporters; he supported their
unsuccessful bid to keep the disabled Florida woman alive. In March 2006, an
African American woman accused three white members of the Duke University men's
lacrosse team of raping her. Jackson stated that his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition would
pay for the rest her college tuition regardless of the outcome of the case. The
case against the three men was later thrown out and the players were declared
"innocent" by the North Carolina Attorney General.
Jackson took a key role in the scandal caused by comedic actor Michael Richards'
racially charged comments in November 2006. Richards called Jackson a few days
after the incident to apologize; Jackson accepted Richards' apology and met with
him publicly as a means of resolving the situation. Jackson also joined black
leaders in a call for the elimination of the "N-word" throughout the entertainment
industry.
On June 23rd, 2007 Jackson was arrested in connection with a crowd protesting at a
gun store in Riverdale, a poor suburb of Chicago, Illinois. Jackson was protesting
the fact that the gun store allegedly had been selling firearms to local gang
members and was contributing to the decay of the community. According to police
reports, Jackson refused to stop blocking the front entrance of the store and let
customers pass. He was charged with one count of criminal trespass to property.
Family
Wife: Jacqueline Lavinia (Brown) Jackson (m. 1962)
Son: Jesse Jackson, Jr. (b. March 11, 1965)
Son: Yusef DuBois Jackson
Son: Jonathan Jackson
Daughter: Santita Jackson
Daughter: Jacqueline Lavinia Jackson, Jr.
Daughter: Ashley (b. May 1999) (with Karin Stanford)
Source : Some of the information on
this page came from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU
Documentation License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Jesse
Jackson - Manifestor - Biography
