Jesse Jackson

He was born Jesse Louis Burns in Greenville, South Carolina, to an 18-year-old high school student and her 33-year-old married neighbor, a former professional boxer who worked for a textile brokerage. A year later his mother married Charles Jackson, a post-office maintenance worker who adopted him and gave him the surname. He grew up counting both men as his father, and being taunted by other children about how he had arrived, which he said afterward was part of what drove him. At Sterling High he was class president, finished tenth in his class and lettered in three sports. He turned down a minor-league baseball contract for a football scholarship at Illinois, transferred after two semesters to North Carolina A&T, played quarterback there, and was elected student body president.

He came out of Selma in 1965 into a job opening the SCLC's Chicago office, ran Operation Breadbasket there from 1966 and nationally from 1967, and turned consumer boycotts into a machine for forcing white-owned companies to hire Black workers. After a break with Ralph Abernathy he started Operation PUSH on Christmas Day 1971. Then he ran for president twice. In 1984 he took 21 percent of the primary vote and 9 percent of the delegates, and told a convention hall about the lesbian and the gay in the American quilt, which no major-party convention had heard before. In 1988 he won 11 contests and 6.9 million votes and finished second to Michael Dukakis. In between he flew to Damascus, Havana, Baghdad and Belgrade and brought captives home.

When King was shot in Memphis on April 4, 1968, Jackson was in the parking lot one floor below. He told reporters he had been the last man to speak to King and that King died in his arms, and several aides who were there disputed both claims. In 1984 he called Jews Hymies and New York Hymietown while talking to a Black reporter from the Washington Post, having assumed it would not be printed. In January 2001 it came out that he had fathered a daughter in May 1999 by a staffer, and that Rainbow PUSH had paid her 15,000 dollars in moving expenses and 21,000 dollars for consulting. In 2008 a Fox News microphone caught him saying he wanted to cut Barack Obama's nuts off over a Father's Day speech about absent Black fathers.

Bill Clinton gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000. Parkinson's disease was diagnosed in November 2017 and revised in April 2025 to progressive supranuclear palsy. He handed over Rainbow PUSH in July 2023, spent ten days in a Chicago hospital in November 2025, and died at home there on February 17, 2026, at 84. He was buried at Oak Woods Cemetery after a funeral in March at which a sitting Colombian president spoke. Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and the Clintons issued tributes, as did Al Sharpton, whom Jackson had made youth director of Breadbasket's Brooklyn branch in 1969. Whether the campaigns changed the Democratic Party or only made a change visible is still argued.

Jesse Jackson's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Operation Breadbasket, Chicago company
  Consumer boycotts aimed at hiring and at contracts for Black-owned firms 1966
• Operation PUSH company
  People United to Save Humanity, later to Serve Humanity 1971
• Release of Lieutenant Robert Goodman from Syria mission
  The first of several negotiated releases, from Damascus to Havana to Baghdad to Belgrade 1983
• Rainbow Coalition address to the Democratic National Convention speech
  The first major-party convention speech to name gay and lesbian Americans 1984
• Both Sides with Jesse Jackson television
  His CNN program, 1992 to 2000 1992

• 1964 aged ~23 Graduates from North Carolina A&T with a degree in sociology He left Chicago Theological Seminary two years later, three classes short.
• 1966 aged ~25 Takes over the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket National director the following year.
• April 4, 1968 aged 26 Is in the parking lot below the balcony when King is shot His account of being the last man to speak to King was disputed by aides who were present.
• December 25, 1971 aged 30 Founds Operation PUSH after breaking with the SCLC Abernathy had suspended him over the handling of Black Expo receipts.
• 1983 aged ~42 Negotiates the release of Navy flier Robert Goodman in Syria
• July 17, 1984 aged 42 Delivers the Rainbow Coalition speech at the Democratic convention He had taken 21 percent of the primary vote and 9 percent of the delegates.
• 1988 aged ~47 Finishes second for the Democratic nomination Eleven contests won and 6.9 million votes, double his 1984 result.
• January 3, 1991 aged 49 Sworn in as shadow senator for the District of Columbia An unpaid post lobbying for statehood, which he held until 1997.
• February 17, 2026 aged 84 Dies at his home in Chicago at 84

• Martin Luther King Jr. 1929–1968
  Baptist minister and civil rights leader whose nonviolent activism ended legal segregation in America. worked under
• Shirley Chisholm 1924–2005
  First Black woman elected to Congress and first woman to run for a major party's presidential nomination. ran first
• Fannie Lou Hamer 1917–1977
  Civil rights activist whose testimony at the 1964 Democratic Convention exposed racist voting suppression. inherited the delegate fight
• Barack Obama b. 1961
  44th President and first African American to hold the office, known for the Affordable Care Act. criticized and then wept for
• Bill Clinton b. 1946
  42nd president whose centrist politics, economic agenda, and impeachment shaped the post-Cold War era. awarded him the Medal of Freedom
• Muhammad Ali 1942–2016
  Boxing legend and cultural icon known for his athletic brilliance and principled stance against the Vietnam War draft. ally and fellow public figure