Jesse Louis Jackson

Jesse Louis Jackson 1941-, African-American political leader, clergyman, and civil-rights activist, b. Greenville, S.C. Raised in poverty, he attended the Chicago Theological Seminary (1963-65) and was ordained a Baptist minister in 1968. Active in the civil-rights movement, he became a close associate of Martin Luther King , Jr. He served as executive director (1966-71) of Operation Breadbasket, a program of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) that addressed the economic problems of African Americans in northern cities. In 1971 he founded Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), an organization to combat racism. Since 1986 he has been president of the National Rainbow Coalition, an independent political organization aimed at uniting disparate groups—racial minorities, the poor, peace activists, and environmentalists. In 1984 and 1988, Jackson, an effective public speaker, campaigned for the Democratic nomination for president, becoming the first African American to contend seriously for that office. He was elected (1990) as a nonvoting member of the Senate from the District of Columbia and has campaigned for its statehood. He has written Legal Lynching (1996), an attack on capital punishment .

Bibliography: See biography by M. Frady (1996); studies by A. L. Reed, Jr. (1986), E. O. Coulton (1989), A. D. Hertzke (1993), and K. L. Stanford (1997).

Jackson, Jesse Louis (1941– ) US politician and civil rights activist. He worked with Martin Luther King in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Jackson served as national director (1967–71) of Operation Breadbasket, an economic arm of the SCLC. In 1971, he formed Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) to combat racism in Chicago. Jackson mounted unsuccessful campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988. In 1986 he became president of the National Rainbow Coalition, which merged with PUSH to form the Rainbow/PUSH coalition in 1996.