Happy birthday to the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. The civil rights leader and founder of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition has spent the last 60 years of his life in front of cameras advocating for social justice.
“His legacy is a profound leadership that aided in moving America forward and aided in addressing the question of racism and discrimination,” said U.S. Rep Maxine Waters about Jackson’s legacy. “It was Jesse Jackson’s leadership, along with other greats that really created change, and the movement toward opening up America to all.”
As Jackson turns 80, his family, friends and colleagues say he will not slow down. Here’s a look at some of the highlights in Jackson’s life.
Oct. 8, 1941
Jesse Louis Burns is born in Greenville, South Carolina. (He would take the last name Jackson from his adoptive stepfather Charles Jackson in 1957.)
1959
Graduates from Sterling High School in Greenville, South Carolina.
1959-60
Attends the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
July 16, 1960
Participates in a sit-in at the whites-only Greenville County Public Library as one of the Greenville Eight. When asked to leave, they stay, only to be arrested by police for disorderly conduct. The library becomes integrated as a result of public demonstrations by the Black community.
1961
Transfers to North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College.
1962
Jackson marries Jacqueline Lavinia Brown on New Year’s Eve. The two will have five children together: Santita Jackson, Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Jonathan Luther Jackson, Yusef DuBois Jackson and Jacqueline Lavinia Jackson Jr.
1963
Jackson continues protests, leading civil rights demonstrations in Greensboro, North Carolina. Arrests for protesting ensues and the acting president of North Carolina A&T threatens to expel students, like Jackson, who participate in the protests.
1964
Jackson, a quarterback for the college, graduates from North Carolina A&T and enters Chicago Theological Seminary, but leaves school before acquiring a degree.
1965
Jackson heads to Selma, Alabama, after watching violent protests on television. Meets the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Becomes a full-time organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or SCLC.
1966
Jackson becomes head of the Chicago chapter of the SCLC’s economic arm, Operation Breadbasket, a program promoting better employment for the Black community by combating discriminatory hiring practices. The same year Jackson would be one of the leaders of King’s open housing marches in Chicago.
1967
Jackson becomes national director of Operation Breadbasket.
1968
King is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
Jackson and the SCLC gather on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for the Poor People’s Campaign. The six-week, live-in demonstrations took place in a protest camp, called Resurrection City, on the Mall to confront poverty and economic inequality as a national human rights issue. Jackson was elected the “mayor” of the tent city. It is in Resurrection City that we hear Jackson’s “I Am Somebody” poem. A chant that will follow him throughout his civil rights career.
Jackson is ordained as a Baptist minister.
1969
Jackson leads a “Black Monday” protest before an estimated 3,000 people at Chicago’s Daley Plaza on Sept. 22, 1969. The protesters then march in objection to discriminatory union hiring practices. Jackson recently recounted his remembrances from that day to The New York Times.
1970
He helps negotiate the surrender of Johnnie Veal, one of two young men suspected in the sniper deaths of Chicago police officers Sgt. James Severin and Anthony Rizzato at Cabrini-Green public housing project.
Later, Veal and George Knights are convicted in the shooting deaths. Both are serving 100-to-199-year sentences.
Jackson proposes the elimination of voter registration and suggests people, instead, show their birth certificates to prove their age.
1971
Jackson resigns from SCLC, founds Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity, later changed to “Serve” Humanity) at 47th Street and King Drive in Chicago. PUSH is about economic empowerment and expanding educational, business and employment opportunities for the disadvantaged and people of color.
Under Jackson, the first Black Expo is held at the International Amphitheater in Chicago. The five-day trade fair draws Black businesspersons from dozens of states fortifying Jackson’s assertion that economic development is the way to Black power.
June 30, 1972
Jackson and Chicago Ald. William Singer unseat Richard J. Daley’s delegate slate at the Democratic convention in Miami.
1975
PUSH for Excellence Inc. (PUSH Excel) is founded by Jackson and educators to inspire students to strive for excellence in education.
1977
1979
Jackson visits Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the Middle East. Jackson also visits South Africa speaking out against apartheid.
1982
Jackson leads a group to boycott ChicagoFest, during the tenure of Mayor Jane Byrne. The protest of ChicagoFest, a predecessor of the Taste of Chicago, was carried out in anger over Byrne’s replacement of three black Chicago Housing Authority board members with three whites. This boycott turned out to be the first step in the successful campaign to elect Harold Washington, the city’s first black mayor, months later.
Jackson leads a national boycott of major U.S. corporations like Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch to sign economic covenants agreeing to PUSH’s demands for more blacks in management and ownership roles in those companies.
Nov. 3, 1983
The rally cry: “Run, Jesse, Run!” is popular; Jackson runs for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president of the United States at the Washington, D.C., Convention Center.
1984
Jackson delivers his “Our Time Has Come” speech at the Democratic Party National Convention in San Francisco. Many commentators consider this speech his best performance. It was the first time a speech at a national convention mentioned the LGBTQ community.
Jackson secures the release of U.S. Navy pilot Lt. Robert Goodman from a Syrian prison after his plane was shot down in the Middle East. (Some called it a publicity stunt for his election campaign.)
Jackson also secures the release of 48 Cuban and Cuban American prisoners in Cuba and brings them back to the United States — most of the Americans released had been jailed on drug-trafficking charges.
Jackson places third in Democratic primary voting behind Sen. Gary Hart and former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale, who took the nomination. Jackson earned more than 3 million votes during the primaries.
Jackson also founds the National Rainbow Coalition, whose mission is to protect, defend and gain civil rights by leveling the economic and educational playing fields, and to promote peace and justice around the world.
1985
Jackson leads demonstration in London’s Trafalgar Square to protest apartheid in South Africa and call on the South African government to free Nelson Mandela.
1988
Jackson makes his second bid for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. He wins the Michigan primary, but eventually loses to Massachusetts’ Michael Dukakis. (Both presidential bids would help lay the groundwork for Barack Obama’s presidential run.)
Jackson and 75 leaders convene in Chicago to discuss national Black agenda, wherein Jackson says Black Americans adopt to be called African American. The term “puts us in our proper historical context.”
1989
Jackson is awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal, the organization’s highest achievement for his ongoing political and civil rights work.
1990
Jackson elected to a six-year term as a shadow senator in Washington, D.C. The role is an elected one and the job is about lobbying members of Congress for D.C. statehood. Shadow senators have no standing in Congress, and the job is unpaid. (D.C. statehood would come up for a vote in 1993, but not reach fruition with, 153 yes votes to 277 no votes.)
1991
Jackson wins the release of foreign nationals being held in Kuwait after meeting with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Jackson is honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a pictorial envelope cancellation. He becomes only the second living person to receive this honor. The other is astronaut and U.S. Sen. John Glenn.
1995
Jackson gives a speech at the Million Man March in Washington, D.C.
1996
Jackson returns to Operation PUSH and the Rainbow Coalition to merge the two to form the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.
1997
Jackson is appointed by President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as the special envoy of the president and secretary of state for the promotion of democracy in Africa.
Jackson launches the Wall Street Project, a challenge to corporate America to end the multibillion-dollar trade deficit with minority vendors and consumers. The project works to ensure equal opportunity for diverse employees, entrepreneurs and consumers.
1998
Jackson acts as “spiritual adviser” to Bill Clinton in the aftermath of the president’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
1999
Jackson goes to Yugoslavia during the Kosovo war to negotiate the release of three U.S. prisoners of war captured on the Macedonian border while part of a peacekeeping unit.
Jackson comes to the aid of the “Decatur 7? — seven teens who, after a fight at a high school football game in Decatur, Illinois, were expelled for two years by the school board under a “zero tolerance” policy. The students who were expelled were Black. One student, Courtney Carson, was under the impression that he’d been given a 10-day suspension with other students involved in the brawl. When he returned to school on the 11th day, he was told of his two-year expulsion, arrested for trespassing and taken to the Macon County Jail. Jackson followed with busloads of protesters. Decatur’s public high schools were closed and a federal lawsuit was filed on the situation that became a public debate on race. Jackson stayed the course with the young men for almost two years. Eventually, then-Gov. George Ryan helped broker a compromise. The school district reduced the expulsions to a year for six of the teenagers and permitted them to enroll in alternative schools. Carson, a member of PUSH, would eventually serve on the Decatur Public Schools school board.
2000
Jackson receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest U.S. civilian honor) from President Bill Clinton.
Jackson is awarded a master of divinity degree from the Chicago Theological Seminary because his life experiences more than fulfill the requirements for his missing courses in pastoral care, preaching and international relations.
2012
Jackson appeals to President Yahya Jammeh for the release of two Americans serving prison sentences for treason in Gambia.
2017
Jackson announces he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
2018
Jackson wins the lifetime achievement award from the National Urban League.
2019
Jackson writes a letter to President Donald Trump asking for a full pardon of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. (His sentence was commuted in 2020.)
2021
Jackson receives his first COVID-19 vaccine shot, then raises his fist in the air and appears to smile behind his protective face mask.
Jackson and Rainbow/PUSH are called into a housing situation at Concordia Place Apartments in Chicago’s Eden Green neighborhood. Residents attest to pest infestation, mold and mildew in their units at the 297-unit apartment complex — privately owned but federally subsidized. Rainbow/PUSH Coalition civil rights group step into the conversation between residents and Capital Realty Group, the New York-based owners of the complex, the Chicago Housing Authority, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Chicago’s Department of Housing to rectify living concerns. “We’re a part of this process so people don’t feel alone,” Jesse Jackson said of PUSH’s involvement with Concordia. We’re trying to make this project a model for the country. We want the standards raised.”
Jackson receives Legion d’Honneur from French President Emmanuel Macron. The award is one of the country’s highest honors.
A month later, Jackson and his wife are hospitalized after testing positive for COVID-19. Jackson is discharged from the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago after his hospitalization.
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Sources: Chicago Tribune archives and reporting
