Jesse Jackson

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Jesse Jackson

Jesse Louis Jackson (born October 8, 1941) is an American politician, civil rights activist, and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, and is a prominent leader of the American Christian left.

Early life

Jesse Jackson was born on October 8, 1941. He was born with the name Jesse Louis Burns (Burns being his mother's last name) into a lower middle-class household in Greenville, South Carolina. His biological father is Noah Robinson, who was a successful black businessman who was married to another woman. Later, his mother married Charles Henry Jackson, who formally adopted him in 1957. At the age of twenty one, he married Jacqueline Lavinia Brown on December 31, 1962. Jackson played football in high school and at both of the universities that he attended. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and graduated from North Carolina A&T University. As a graduate student, Jesse studied divinity at the Chicago Theological Seminary (he did not complete the degree at the time but was later awarded a Master of Divinity in 2000 based on life experience.)

Civil Rights leader

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Jackson sits beside Ken Livingstone at an Anti-Apartheid rally in 1985

In 1965, Jackson participated in Martin Luther King Jr.’s movement in Selma, 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.

"The Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks on a radio broadcast from the headquarters of Operation PUSH, [People United to Save Humanity] at its annual convention." July 1973. Photograph by John H. White.

Jackson was present with King in Memphis when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, the day after making his famous "I’ve been to the mountaintop" speech given to the Mason Temple, Church of God in Christ, although Jackson was not on the balcony with Dr. King as he is reported to have claimed. . Jackson also angered many of King's top staff in the hours and days following the assassination, because he violated their group decision to speak in one voice to the media. Jackson left Memphis, and appeared a day after the shooting before the Chicago City Council with what he claimed were bloodstains on his shirt from cradling Dr. King's head. Jackson's actions in the aftermath of the killing created a long running rift between him and the established civil rights leadership.

Beginning in 1968, Jackson increasingly clashed with Ralph Abernathy, King's successor as head of the national SCLC. Jackson's behavior at the Poor People's Campaign in Washington in the summer of 1968 contributed to this. Abernathy reportedly resented Jackson's speaking ability, and Jackson chafed at Abernathy's attempt to rein him in. In December 1971, they had 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. It merged with PUSH in 1996.

Statesman

Jackson surrounded by marchers carrying signs advocating support for the Hawkins-Humphrey Bill for full employment, January 1975.

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.

• 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, President Reagan welcomed both Jackson and Goodman at 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.
• In 1997, Jackson traveled to Kenya to meet with Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi as President 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. POW's captured on the 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.
• 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 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

Jesse Jackson, July 1983.

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.

A major controversy erupted during the early stages of the race, when Jackson was reported making remarks in which he referred to Jews as "hymies" and to New York City as "Hymietown,". He initially denied using those terms, and though he later issued an apology, the remarks were widely publicized and were believed to have negatively impacted his campaign.

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 3.5 million votes and won five primaries, all in the South.

As he had gained 21% of the popular vote but only 8% of delegates, he afterwards complained that he had 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 women or visible minority, Jackson mocked the screening process as a "p.r. parade of personalities". He also criticized Mondale, saying that Hubert Humphrey was the "last significant politician out of the St. Paul-Minneapolis" area.[4]

1988 Election

Four years later, in 1988, Jackson once again offered himself as a candidate for the nomination. This time, his successes in the past made him seem to be a more credible candidate, and he was both better financed and better organized. Although most people didn't seem to believe that he had a serious chance at winning, Jackson once again exceeded expectations as he more than doubled his previous results, capturing 6.9 million votes and winning eleven primaries. Briefly, after he won 55% of the vote in the Michigan primary, he was considered the frontrunner for the nomination, as he surpassed all the other candidates in total number of pledged delegates.

In the end, however, he lost the nomination, coming a close second to Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, the eventual nominee.

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, the poor and working poor, and homosexuals, as well as White progressives who fit into none of those categories, Jackson ran on a platform that included:

• creating a WPA-style program to rebuild America's infrastructure and provide jobs to all Americans,
• reprioritizing the War on Drugs to focus less on mandatory minimum sentences for drug users (which he views as racially biased) and more on harsher punishments for money-laundering bankers and others who are part of the "supply" end of "supply and demand,"
• reversing Reaganomics-inspired tax cuts for the richest ten percent of Americans and using the money to finance social welfare programs,
• cutting the budget of the Department of Defense by as much as fifteen percent over the course of his administration,
• declaring Apartheid-era South Africa to be a rogue nation,
• instituting an immediate nuclear freeze and beginning disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union,
• giving reparations to descendants of black slaves,
• supporting family farmers by reviving many of Roosevelt's New Deal-era farm programs,
• creating a single-payer system of universal health care,
• ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment,
• increasing federal funding for lower-level public education and providing free community college to all,
• applying stricter enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, and
• supporting the formation of a Palestinian state.

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 pro-life views. Jackson once endorsed the pro-life Hyde Amendment and wrote an article 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 could not 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 have 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 is the central question confronting mankind. Failure to answer that question affirmatively may leave us with a hell right here on earth."

However, since then, Rev. Jackson has adopted an openly pro-choice view, believing the right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy is fundamental and should not be infringed in any way by the government.

Current activities

While Jesse 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 Jesse 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 the Reverend 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 did not 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. His work involved giving speeches to ethnic audiences. 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, Crystal Gail Mangum had accused three men of the Duke University Men's Lacross team of raping her. Jackson had agreed to pay the rest of her college tuition regardless of the outcome of the case.

Criticism and controversies

Extra-marital affair

During the contested election of 2000, Jackson quickly became involved in pro-Democrat demonstrations in the state of Florida. Shortly afterward, it was revealed that Jackson (married since 1962) had an affair with a staffer Karin Stanford that resulted in the birth of his daughter, Ashley. The Rainbow Push Coalition had paid Stanford $40,000 to relocate her to Southern California, in addition to a continuing $3,000 a month in support, and $365,000 in funds from Rainbow Push were also used to purchase Stanford’s house. Many commentators questioned the legality of these payments and charged that Jackson was paying "hush money" to Stanford. This seriously damaged Jesse Jackson's credibility even among long-time supporters and for a brief time prompted Jackson to withdraw from activism. During this time, it was suggested by some commentators that Al Sharpton had usurped Jackson's position as the leading figure in the African-American political movement. Jackson appeared at several anti-war rallies in opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. However, Jesse Jackson has often been the center of controversy. Critics of Jackson (including the African American Jesse Lee Peterson, founder of the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny) claim that he has exploited poverty stricken African Americans in order to make money and gain political power.

Budweiser boycott

In 1982, Jackson launched a "this Bud's a dud" boycott of Anheuser-Busch because it had only three Black-owned distributors nationwide. After languishing for over a decade, the boycott movement received a boost when Budweiser’s River North distributorship was accused of denying promotions to several of its African American employees. Jackson came to the aid of the employees in 1997 shortly after the first EEOC suit was filed. Shortly thereafter, Anheuser Busch contributed $10,000 to Jackson’s Citizenship Education Fund, contributed over $500,000 to the Rainbow PUSH coalition, and established a $10 million fund to help non-whites buy distributorships. In 1998, the River North distributorship was purchased by two of Jackson’s sons Yusef and Jonathan Jackson. They refuse to publicly disclose how much they paid for the distributor, but the business was worth an estimated $25 to $30 million. Shortly after the sale, Jackson dropped his prior support of the Anheuser Busch boycott campaign. The St. Louis American, a Black-owned paper in St. Louis, Missouri, reported that Jackson had demanded $500 each from local African American businessmen to help support the Anheuser-Busch boycott campaign. Jackson sued the paper for libel, but dropped the suit when a judge ruled that the paper could inspect the finances of Jackson as well as his many organizations in order to prove their case. Jackson’s critics, such as Chicago Sun-Times reporter Tim Novak, claim that Jackson had in effect blackmailed Anheuser-Busch into selling the distributorship to Jackson’s sons in exchange for Jackson dropping the boycott. They also point out that Yusef and Jonathan Jackson had no prior experience in alcoholic beverage distribution or any other business.

2004 presidential election

Jesse Jackson’s most recent project was gathering information and support to investigate the 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy, particularly the voting results in Ohio and its recount. Jackson called for a congressional debate on the matter, asking for a fair count and national voting standards. He said 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 would not have been certified by the international community. Jackson has 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 United States Republican Party. Based on information obtained in hearings held by Rep. John Conyers (Detroit, Michigan) 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 did not 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 1-74 by the United States Senate and 31-267 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 from various citizen groups.

Family

• Wife: Jacqueline Lavinia (Brown) Jackson (m. 1962)
  • Son: Jesse Jackson, Jr. (b. March 11, 1965)
  • Son: Yusef DuBois Jackson
  • Son: Jonathan Jackson
  • Daughter: Sanitita Jackson
  • Daughter: Jacqueline Lavinia Jackson, Jr.
  • Daughter: Ashley (b. May 1999) (resulting from an extramarital affair)

Quotes

• "America, stay out the Bushes. Stay out the Bushes. Stay out the Bushes." - 2000 DNC Address
• "Tonight, we pause and give praise and honor to God for being good enough to allow us to be at this place at this time. When I look out at this convention, I see the face of America: Red, Yellow, Brown, Black, and White. We are all precious in God's sight -- the real rainbow coalition." 1988 DNC Convention Address
• "This is not a perfect party. We are not a perfect people. Yet, we are called to a perfect mission. Our mission: to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless, to teach the illiterate, to provide jobs for the jobless, and to choose the human race over the nuclear race." 1984 DNC Convention Address
• "I hear that melting-pot stuff a lot, and all I can say is that we haven't melted."
• "Today's students can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains. If they can conceive it and believe it, they can achieve it. They must know it is not their aptitude but their attitude that will determine their altitude."
• "I feel pain by the governor's decision to choose revenge over redemption and to use "Tookie" Williams as a trophy in this flawed system. I was in South Africa about a month ago, meeting with President Nelson Mandela. And there was a huge picture on the wall of Mr. Mandela and Governor Schwarzenegger. He was congratulating Mr. Mandela because, after twenty-seven years in jail, Mr. Mandela chose redemption over revenge. He didn't seek to revenge his -- having been arrested the way he was. And somehow, some way, it seems that now Mr. Schwarzenegger did not learn that lesson from Mr. Mandela. "

See also

• I Am - Somebody
• Jesse Lee Peterson, an outspoken African American critic of Jesse Jackson

References

• David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, T.R.M. Howard: Pragmatism over Strict Integrationist Ideology in the Mississippi Delta, 1942-1954 in Glenn Feldman, ed., Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South (2004 book), 68-95.
• David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito. T.R.M. Howard M.D.: A Mississippi Doctor in Chicago Civil Rights, A.M.E. Church Review (July-September 2001), 50-59.

External links

• Rainbow/Push Coalition
• quotes
• 1988 DNC speech transcript and audio
• 1984 DNC speech transcript and audio