Everything about Jesse Jackson totally explained
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, 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 wasn't 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 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.
Jackson has been known for commanding public attention since he first started working for King in 1966. His primary goal for this attention has been to give blacks a sense of pride. He has also stressed that success as a race will be achieved by command through the electoral process.
Beginning in 1968, Jackson increasingly clashed with
Ralph Abernathy, King's successor as head of the national SCLC. In December, 1971, they'd 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
FYR of 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
On
November 31983, he announced his campaign for presidency. 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'd gained 21% of the popular vote but only 8% of delegates, he afterwards complained that he'd 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 didn't seem to believe he'd 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.
(External Link
) (External Link) Some news accounts credit him with 13 wins.
(External Link) 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. 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:
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 [a] higher order than the right to life... that was the premise of slavery. You couldn't 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've 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's 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 shouldn't 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 didn't 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. In the mid-1990s, he was approached about being the
United States Ambassador to
South Africa but declined the opportunity in favor of helping
Jesse Jackson, Jr. run for the
United States House of Representatives.
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 wouldn't 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 didn't 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.
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 didn't 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.
Controversies
Remarks about Jews
Jackson has been criticized for some of the remarks he's made about Jews and Jewish issues.
Most infamously, Jackson referred to Jews as "Hymies" and to New York City as "Hymietown" in January 1984 during a conversation with Washington Post reporter Milton Coleman. Jackson at first denied the remarks, then accused Jews of conspiring to defeat him. The Nation of Islam's leader
Louis Farrakhan, threatened Coleman in a radio broadcast and issuing a public warning to Jews, made in Jackson's presence: "If you harm this brother [Jackson], it'll be the last one you harm." Finally, Jackson apologized during a speech before national Jewish leaders in a
synagogue. Yet Jackson refused to denounce Farrakhan, and continuing suspicions have led to an enduring split between Jackson and many Jews. Among Jackson's other remarks were that
Richard Nixon was less attentive to poverty in the U.S. because "four out of five [ofNixon's top advisors] are
German Jews and their priorities are on Europe and Asia"; that he was "sick and tired of hearing about
the Holocaust"; and that there are "very few Jewish reporters that have the capacity to be objective about
Arab affairs". Jackson has since apologized and was invited to speak in support of Al Gore and Joe Lieberman at the 2000 Democratic National Convention.
Extra-marital affair
Married since 1962 to Jacqueline Lavinia Brown, Jackson was in 2001 shown to have had an affair with a staffer,
Karin Stanford, that resulted in the birth of a daughter, Ashley. According to CNN, in August of 1999, The Rainbow Push Coalition had paid Stanford $15,000 in moving expenses and $21,000 in payment for contracting work. This incident prompted Jackson to withdraw from
activism for a short period of time. Separate from the 1999 Rainbow Coalition payments, Jackson pays $3,000 a month in child support.:
Ellen McCormack - 79,609 (67.33%)
Ronald Reagan - 34,293 (29.00%)
No candidate - 2,729 (2.31%)
Jesse Jackson - 1,606 (1.36%)
1984 Democratic presidential primaries
Walter Mondale - 6,952,912 (38.32%)
Gary Hart - 6,504,842 (35.85%)
Jesse Jackson - 3,282,431 (18.09%)
John Glenn - 617,909 (3.41%)
George McGovern - 334,801 (1.85%)
Unpledged - 146,212 (0.81%)
Lyndon LaRouche - 123,649 (0.68%)
Reubin O'Donovan Askew - 52,759 (0.29%)
Alan Cranston - 51,437 (0.28%)
Ernest Hollings - 33,684 (0.19%)
1984 Democratic National Convention:
Walter Mondale - 2,191 (56.41%)
Gary Hart - 1,201 (30.92%)
Jesse Jackson - 466 (12.00%)
Thomas F. Eagleton - 18 (0.46%)
George McGovern - 4 (0.10%)
John Glenn - 2 (0.05%)
Joe Biden - 1 (0.03%)
Martha Kirkland
1988 Democratic presidential primaries:
Michael Dukakis - 9,898,750 (42.47%)
Jesse Jackson - 6,788,991 (29.13%)
Al Gore - 3,185,806 (13.67%)
Dick Gephardt - 1,399,041 (6.00%)
Paul M. Simon - 1,082,960 (4.65%)
Gary Hart - 415,716 (1.78%)
Unpledged - 250,307 (1.07%)
Bruce Babbitt - 77,780 (0.33%)
Lyndon LaRouche - 70,938 (0.30%)
David Duke - 45,289 (0.19%)
James Traficant - 30,879 (0.13%)
Douglas E. Applegate - 25,068 (0.11%)
1988 Democratic National Convention:
Michael Dukakis - 2,877 (70.09%)
Jesse Jackson - 1,219 (29.70%)
Richard H. Stallings - 3 (0.07%)
Joe Biden - 2 (0.05%)
Dick Gephardt - 2 (0.05%)
Lloyd Bentsen - 1 (0.02%)
Gary Hart - 1 (0.02%)
Shadow Senator from District of Columbia, 1990
Two candidates who won the highest number of vote takes two shadow seats.
Jesse Jackson (D) - 105,633 (46.80%)
Florence Pendleton (D) - 58,451 (25.89%)
Harry T. Alexander (I) - 13,983 (6.19%)
Milton Francis (R) - 13,538 (6.00%)
Joan Gillison (R) - 12,845 (5.69%)
Keith M. Wilkerson (D.C. Statehood) - 4,545 (2.01%)
Anthony W. Peacock (D.S. Statehood) - 4,285 (1.90%)
John West (I) - 3,621 (1.60%)
David L. Whitehead (I) - 3,341 (1.48%)
Sam Manuel (Socialist Workers) - 2,765 (1.23%)
Lee Black (I) - 2,728 (1.21%) Further Information
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