Jesse Jackson is a left-wing activist, preacher, former associate of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Democratic Party politician. Jackson was born in 1941 and ordained a Baptist minister in 1968. He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 1984 and 1988, and founded and leads the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. Left-wing activist Al Sharpton and former Democratic National Committee chairs Ron Brown and Donna Brazile are among the left-of-center political operatives whose careers were heavily influenced by early work for Jackson. ^{1 2}

In 1966 Jackson joined Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). ³ He was placed in charge of the SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket, a job placement program, and by 1969 had turned the Chicago affiliate of Breadbasket into a powerful political force within the city and the state of Illinois. By this time – a year after King was murdered – a New York Times report referred to Jackson as the “most persuasive black leader on the national scene.” ⁴ Jackson’s management of Breadbasket and increasing national profile came into conflict with other SCLC leaders, and in 1971, Jackson resigned from the organization. ⁵

Jackson’s ideology skews to the left wing of the Democratic Party. During his 1988 run for the Democratic Presidential nomination, he was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, later saying “I didn’t feel the need to run from the word, ‘socialist,’ or run to the word, ‘capitalist.’”⁶ In that campaign, Jackson proposed a single-payer government-run healthcare system to replace private insurance that was well to the left of the position advocated by 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. ^{7 8} His 1988 advocacy of federal funding for abortions placed him to the left of the positions then held by future Democratic Vice Presidents Joe Biden and Al Gore. ⁹ In 2013 he attended the funeral of Venezuelan socialist dictator Hugo Chavez, and in a prayer noted: “How do we measure a great leader? By how he treats the least of these. Hugo fed the hungry. He lifted the poor. He raised their hopes. He helped them realize their dreams.” ^{10 11}

Early and Personal Life

Jesse Jackson was born October 8, 1941, Greenville South Carolina. He was ordained a Baptist minister in 1968. ¹²

In July 1960, at age 19, he and seven others were arrested for attempting to use a segregated public library in Greenville. Their activism and a lawsuit filed on their behalf led to the library abandoning its discrimination against black residents. ¹³

After high school, Jackson was offered a professional baseball contract from the Chicago White Sox but chose instead a football scholarship to attend the University of Illinois. He later transferred to and graduated from North Carolina A&T State University in 1964. Next, he began post-graduate work at the Chicago Theological Seminary, where he remained until 1966. ¹⁴

He married Jacqueline Lavinia Jackson in 1962. They had five children together and were still married as of early 2019. ¹⁵

Jackson had a sixth child born in 1999 to the former leader of his Rainbow/PUSH Washington, D.C., office. Rainbow/PUSH officials confirmed in early 2001 that the woman received at least $15,000 in relocation assistance after leaving the organization. ¹⁶

Jackson’s son, Jesse Jackson, Jr., became a Democratic Congressman from Illinois in late 1995 and held the position until his resignation in November 2012. At the time of his resignation, Jackson Jr. was under investigation for allegations that would lead to him pleading guilty in 2013 to federal felony charges relating to his use of campaign funds to pay personal expenses. He received a 30-month sentence and was released in the fall of 2015. ^{17 18}

In August 2000 Jackson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton. ¹⁹

In late November 2017, at age 76, Jackson revealed he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. ²⁰

Civil Rights Era

Three courses short of attaining his divinity degree from Chicago Theological Seminary, Jackson left the school in 1966 to join the civil rights movement. He had met Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1965 when Jackson and other Chicago Theological Seminary students participated in the Selma to Montgomery March, a civil and voting rights protest march through Alabama. The leadership abilities Jackson demonstrated during the march impressed King, who placed him in charge of Operation Breadbasket, an economic outreach for MLK’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). ²¹

Jackson was present at the motel in Memphis when King was assassinated in April 1968, and in the aftermath of the murder appeared on NBC’s “Today Show,” during which he claimed to have been the last person to speak with King. This claim was disputed by many of King’s associates also at the scene. Speaking of the Jackson claim nearly 20 years later, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, a close King ally who would succeed him as president of the SCLC, said of Jackson: ”I hope God has forgiven him.” ²²

Operation Breadbasket

When MLK placed Jackson in charge of Operation Breadbasket in 1966, it had been created as a job-placement program for African-Americans that would operate in Chicago, Atlanta (SCLC’s home city), and in other major cities. Because of Jackson’s success with Breadbasket in Chicago, he was soon promoted to SCLC’s economic director. The program did not thrive in other cities where Jackson was not directly involved. ²³

One difference in Chicago was that Jackson took the idea beyond its original objective to also include what a New York Times report characterized as “the use or threat of mass boycotts” to “obtain agreements with white merchants” to give preferential contracting advantages to black-owned merchants, banks and professional service firms. ²⁴

Jackson’s Breadbasket was also turned into a political force to challenge the leadership of then-Chicago Mayor Richard Daley (D), to whom Jackson referred as “King Richard.” In the 1968 Illinois gubernatorial election, Jackson supported Republican Richard Ogilvie and some other Republicans running for the state legislature, rather than the Democratic slate promoted by Daley. Ogilvie won and served a single term as governor. ²⁵

In May 1969 Jackson led a “hunger march” to the Illinois state capitol to successfully protest a proposal to cut $25 million from the state’s public aid budget. After winning reinstatement of the spending from Ogilvie, Jackson declared this was the reason for his opposition to Daley and support for Republicans. ²⁶

“Now you see why I supported Ogilvie,” he said to the New York Times. “There was evil on his side and evil on the other side, and like the parting of the waters that leaves God’s children free to march right down the middle.” ²⁷

By June 1969, just over a year after MLK’s murder, Jackson’s success in Chicago led the Times to declare that “almost everyone who has seen Mr. Jackson in operation acknowledges that he is probably the most persuasive black leader on the national scene and that Breadbasket is something rare and viable in the movement.” ²⁸ By late 1971 the Times reported Breadbasket had grown to have a presence in 17 different cities, and that Jackson had “become a sought‐after speaker for both black and white affairs throughout the country.” ²⁹

But according to the newspaper this popularity also fueled “mounting friction” between Jackson and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, noting that Jackson had become “the unchallenged leader of Chicago’s large black community and a more familiar figure to the nation’s urban masses than Mr. Abernathy.” Breadbasket was still an affiliate of the SCLC, under the ultimate supervision of Abernathy, who was the head of SCLC following King’s assassination. ³⁰

Resignation from SCLC

The dispute between Abernathy and Jackson came to a head in December 1971 when Jackson resigned from both the SCLC and Operation Breadbasket. In the spring of that year Jackson had refused to comply with an order to move Breadbasket to Atlanta and merge it with SCLC’s national headquarters. By September, Abernathy had placed a Northwestern University law professor in charge of Breadbasket’s Chicago operations, leaving Jackson as the national director. ³¹

In early December, Abernathy and the SCLC board launched an investigation of Jackson and Breadbasket’s Chicago operations. Citing Jackson for defying instructions in the handling of the financing for an event in October 1971 involving black business leaders in Chicago, the SCLC leadership suspended him from Breadbasket for 60 days. Jackson telegrammed Abernathy with his resignation shortly thereafter. ³²

Operation PUSH / Rainbow Coalition

Also see Rainbow/PUSH Coalition (Other Group)

At the end of 1971, and after his break with the SCLC and Operation Breadbasket, Jackson founded Operation PUSH. The acronym originally meant “People United to Save Humanity” but was later changed to “People United to Serve Humanity.” Its objectives became very similar to the work Jackson had been doing with Breadbasket, including voter registration, social programs, and corporate boycotts with the ostensible goal of greater employment access and business opportunities for the black community. ³³

By 1987, according to the New York Times, boycotts of white-owned companies and the threat of same to “win franchises, supply contracts and jobs for blacks” had become the “heart of PUSH’s economic program.” Coca-Cola, Burger King and Heublein (a food and alcoholic beverage distributor) were some of the corporations noted as having signed agreements with PUSH. ³⁴

The boycotts became controversial. The Times noted Jackson’s half-brother “received business from both Coca-Cola and Heublein after PUSH boycotts.” And “cosmetics-industry officials” speaking off the record told the newspaper that a 1987 boycott of Revlon was not because of any matter of principle, but instead more about PUSH “boosting the position of several black-owned cosmetics companies whose top executives are among Mr. Jackson’s biggest financial supporters.” Jackson denied the allegation regarding Revlon, but said it was “fair and proper” for PUSH to receive compensation from companies that benefit from the boycott campaigns. ³⁵

“Why shouldn’t the beneficiaries of our work contribute to the organization that’s the benefactor?” he asked, rhetorically. “Is that not the way that every political organization operates?”³⁶

PUSH financial reports showed debts of $339,056 in 1986 ($778,690 in 2019 dollars), but the shortfall had been mostly resolved by 1987. A related PUSH program receiving federal grants to promote reading – PUSH-excel – was $1.4 million in debt ($3.2 million in 2019 dollars), with the federal government demanding repayment of $1.2 million due to alleged poor accounting practices. Jackson stepped away from leadership of the organization prior to his run for President in 1988. ³⁷

In the mid-1980s, Jackson created the Rainbow Coalition, a public policy advocacy organization aimed at promoting Jackson’s agenda well beyond his support in the African-American community. The name was inspired by his speech to the 1984 Democratic National Convention in which he recounted the successes of the Civil Rights Era, but argued: “Twenty years later, we cannot be satisfied by just restoring the old coalition.” He called for the formation of a “Rainbow Coalition” to defeat President Reagan at the upcoming election. He said this coalition would include Arabs, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, disabled veterans, small farmers, and homosexuals. ³⁸

Jackson’s 1984 Presidential campaign had promoted policies to the left of the mainstream Democratic Party and because of this began to make inroads to those who agreed with him, regardless of background and race. The Rainbow Coalition was designed to expand upon that influence. ³⁹ In 1996 Rainbow was merged with Operation PUSH to create what has become the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. ⁴⁰ As of early 2019 Jackson is listed as the “founder and president” on the website. ⁴¹

Presidential Campaigns

Jackson was a candidate for President in 1984 and 1988, competing in the Democratic primaries both times.

1984 Primaries

In the 1984 Democratic Presidential primaries and caucuses, Jackson finished with nearly 3.3 million votes, third in popular vote behind Colorado Senator Gary Hart (6.5 million votes) and the eventual Democratic nominee, former Vice President Walter Mondale (6.8 million). ⁴² He won the primaries in Louisiana⁴³ and the District of Columbia,⁴⁴ split the results with Mondale in Mississippi⁴⁵, and finished second behind “uncommitted” in the South Carolina⁴⁶ Democratic caucus.

In January 1984, early in the campaign, Jackson referred to Jews as “Hymies” and New York City as “Hymietown” during an interview with a Washington Post reporter. Responding to the ensuing protests from the Jewish community, Jackson initially denied the remarks, then accused Jews of conspiring to defeat him, and finally apologized in late February while at a synagogue in New Hampshire, the first Democratic primary state. ⁴⁷

1988 Primaries

Jackson finished second in the 1988 Democratic Presidential primaries and caucuses, with a popular vote of almost 6.8 million. ⁴⁸ Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis, then-governor of Massachusetts, posted nearly 9.9 million votes, and future Vice President Al Gore finished behind Jackson with nearly 3.2 million votes. ⁴⁹ Jackson won nine states outright and split two others with Dukakis. ⁵⁰

A June 1988 New York Times comparison of voting patterns in the 1984 and 1988 Democratic primaries, published shortly before all the contests were complete, showed Jackson had substantially improved his performance among both white and black Democrats. He won the votes of well over 2 million white Democrats in 1988, three times more than in 1984. Among white voters with college or graduate degrees, Jackson was polling better than Dukakis. Jackson won 92 percent of black Democratic primary votes when the survey was conducted, up from 77 percent in 1984. ⁵¹

In his 1988 Presidential campaign, Jackson proposed the creation of a single-payer government-run national healthcare system that would eliminate “our wasteful, public-private patchwork medical delivery system.” This proposal for total federal control of health care spending decisions placed Jackson well to the left of the health care policy proposed by 1988 Democratic Party Presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, and the position advocated by 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. ⁵²⁵³

Other Jackson proposals from the 1988 campaign included tax hikes on the rich, a five-year freeze on military spending, moratoriums on nuclear weapons and missile testing, opposition to first-strike use of nuclear weapons, and advocacy of a Palestinian homeland. ^{54 55}

Political Positions

Jackson’s policy positions and political alliances skew to the left of the mainstream Democratic Party. During his 1988 run for the Democratic Presidential nomination, he was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America. His campaign staff had initially been reluctant to accept the leftist pressure group’s support, but were overruled by Jackson, who explained in 2015: “I didn’t feel the need to run from the word, ‘socialist,’ or run to the word, ‘capitalist.’”⁵⁶ Left-wing philosopher Cornel West worked for the nomination of Jackson in both of his Presidential campaigns,⁵⁷ as did U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), then the mayor of Burlington, Vermont. ⁵⁸ Similarly, The Nation, a left-of-center magazine that endorsed Sanders for President in 2016, endorsed Jackson in 1988. ⁵⁹

Jackson is an outspoken admirer of socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and authored a February 2019 Chicago Sun-Times op-ed titled “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is under fire because she’s right.” Citing polls supposedly showing a majority favors Medicare for All, tuition free college, a $15 minimum wage, and her Green New Deal plan, he said she is “young and smart and charismatic” and is accused of being a radical because her policies adhere to the “moral center” rather than the political center. ⁶⁰

Abortion Flip-Flop

Prior to his 1988 campaign for President, Jackson had been an outspoken opponent of abortion. In late 1975, both he and the wife of evangelist Billy Graham announced their support for a plan by America’s Roman Catholic bishops to add an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have prohibited abortions. ⁶¹ During a 1977 debate over federal abortion funding he sent a letter to Congress which stated “as a matter of conscience I must oppose the use of federal funds for a policy of killing infants.” ⁶²

Jackson completely reversed his position by June 1987, when Jackson was praised in a National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) guidebook as one of just three anticipated 1988 Presidential candidates giving full support for abortion rights. Of the three (which also included eventual 1988 Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis), NARAL stated they “completely understand and support the basic right of women to full reproductive rights.” Democratic candidates listed at that time with less strident support for abortion rights than Jackson included future Democratic Vice Presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden. ⁶³

Jackson was quoted in 1988 as saying women “must have freedom of choice over what to do over their bodies,” and “it is not right to impose private, religious and moral positions on public policy.” ⁶⁴
Terri Schiavo Dispute

In a so-called “right to die” dispute that came to a head in early 2005, Jackson opposed the removal of a feeding tube from Terri Schiavo, a 41-year-old Florida woman who had been in a persistent vegetative state for the prior 15 years, following a 1990 cardiac arrest that temporarily starved her brain of oxygen. Jackson’s outspoken support for sustaining her life support placed him in alliance with Randall Terry, founder of the anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue, and in opposition to many pro-abortion organizations which believed Schiavo’s husband should have the right to remove her life support. Schiavo’s parents, who opposed their son-in-law’s decision to remove life support from their daughter, had enlisted Terry as their spokesperson. ^{65 66}

Jackson intervened at the request of Schiavo’s brother, said starving her was an “injustice,” and called on Florida lawmakers to approve a change in the law that would have prevented the removal of her feeding tube. ⁶⁷ Schiavo died after the feeding tube was removed in March 2005.

Praising Hugo Chavez

Following the death of Venezuela’s socialist dictator Hugo Chavez in March 2013, Jackson went to Venezuela with a delegation from his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition to attend the funeral. ⁶⁸

“How do we measure a great leader?,” asked Jackson in a funeral prayer. “By how he treats the least of these. Hugo fed the hungry. He lifted the poor. He raised their hopes. He helped them realize their dreams. And so today we do mourn because we lost a lot. But we have a lot left: a stable government, an orderly transition.” ^{69 70}

Later that day he was interviewed by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who asked: “What do you say to all those Venezuelans not only in the opposition, but those that have fled the country and a lot of other people around the world who considered Hugo Chavez a vile dictator?”⁷¹

“Well, you know, democracy is — our first 15 presidents owned people,” began Jackson’s (factually incorrect—five of the first 15 Presidents were, to the extent it is known, never slaveholders, and John Quincy Adams was an active opponent of slavery while serving in the U.S. House of Representatives after his Presidency) reply. “They owned slaves.” ⁷²

Blitzer asked him to clarify whether he was really comparing Hugo Chavez to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison. ⁷³

“Well, democracy has evolved,” Jackson responded. “My point is that our first 15 presidents owned slaves and called it democracy for 204 years. We’ve come a mighty long way. The democracy in South Africa is just, what, 25 years old or thereabouts. I was just there eight years ago, white people couldn’t vote, couldn’t vote on campuses, democracy has evolved and if we’re engaged, we can help it evolve in the right direction.” ⁷⁴

Days earlier Human Rights Watch had issued a news release stating Chavez’s “authoritarian legacy” in Venezuela “was characterized by a dramatic concentration of power and open disregard for basic human rights guarantees.” ⁷⁵

War on Drugs

Jackson favors ending the so-called “war on drugs.” In a 2011 speech he referred to it as a “crime against humanity,” a “war on black and brown” and “government sponsored terrorism” that has “raised the price of black existence” because it disproportionately targets and incarcerates black users of illegal drugs over white users. ⁷⁶

Hostage/Prisoner Releases

On several occasions Jackson has intervened to obtain the release of Americans who were being held by either hostile governments, or foreign criminal organizations.

• In 1984, Jackson and a delegation he took to Syria obtained the release of a U.S. Navy pilot who had been shot down in late 1983 while flying a mission over Lebanon, and then held hostage by the Syrian government. Also in 1984 Jackson negotiated the release of 48 Cuban and Cuban-American prisoners held by the communist Cuban government. ⁷⁷
• After Iraq’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, but before the U.S. and other western nations led the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq to liberate Kuwait, there were several hundred American, British, French and other western-nation citizens hiding in both Iraq and Kuwait. Jackson helped persuade Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to let them leave. ⁷⁸
• In 1999 he persuaded Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic to release three U.S. soldiers captured while working with a United Nations peacekeeping mission in the region. ⁷⁹
• Two Americans serving prison sentences in Gambia were released in 2012, following Jackson traveling there and speaking with that nation’s president. ⁸⁰
• An American backpacker traveling in Columbia was captured in 2013 by the so-called Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a communist narco-terrorist organization that had at that time been trying to overthrow he Columbian government for almost half a century. Jackson’s public appeals to the terrorists led to the release of the American. ⁸¹

Influence on Prominent Activists

Jackson’s work and political career was a springboard for the success of several influential Democratic and left-of-center activists, including two former heads of the Democratic National Committee.

• Donna Brazile, a longtime Democratic strategist and former chair of the Democratic National Committee, was a field director for Jackson’s 1984 Presidential race. ⁸²
• Ron Brown, former Clinton Administration Secretary of Commerce, and the first African-American chair of the Democratic National Committee, headed up Jackson’s 1988 delegation at the Democratic National Convention. ⁸³

Al Sharpton was a former staffer working under Jackson at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. ⁸⁴

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8. Matthews, Dylan. “Democrats are increasingly endorsing single-payer health care. Hillary Clinton is not.” Vox. September 13, 2017. Accessed February 22, 2019. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/13/16297454/hillary-clinton-single-payer-vox-interview
9. “2 GROUPS LIST CANDIDATES’ VIEWS ON ABORTION.” New York Times. June 4, 1987. Accessed March 5, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/04/us/2-groups-list-candidates-views-on-abortion.html
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11. LoGiurato, Brett. “Here Are Jesse Jackson And Sean Penn Hanging Out At Hugo Chavez’s Funeral.” Business Insider. March 8. 2013. Accessed March 6, 2019. https://www.businessinsider.com/hugo-chavez-funeral-jesse-jackson-sean-penn-photo-2013-3
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60. Jackson, Jesse. “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is under fire because she’s right.” Chicago Sun-Times. February 11, 2019. Accessed March 5, 2019. https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/ocasio-cortez-donald-trump-howard-schultz-socialism-medicare-green-new-deal/
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69. “Rev. Jesse Jackson on Moral Leadership in His Eulogy for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.” Georgetown University, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. March 8, 2013. Accessed March 6, 2019. https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/quotes/rev-jesse-jackson-on-moral-leadership-in-his-eulogy-for-venezuelan-president-hugo-chavez
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