Jesse Jackson: Difference between revisions

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	==2004 presidential election==		==2004 presidential election==
	Jesse Jackson’s most recent project related to presidential politics was gathering information and support to investigate the ], 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 ] 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 ] to that of the ], saying that if Ohio were ], the U.S. presidential election would not have been certified by the international community. Jackson has called ] ] inappropriately partisan and said that Blackwell may have been pressured by President ] and Vice-President ] to deliver Ohio to the ].

	Based on information obtained in hearings held by Rep. ] (Detroit, Michigan) and discovered during a flawed recount of the Ohio presidential vote called for by ] candidate ] and ] candidate ], 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 Democrat 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 ]. Many high-ranking Democrats chose to distance themselves from this debate, including ], despite Jesse Jackson personally asking Kerry for help. The call for election reform legislation and voting rights protection nonetheless continued from various citizen groups.

	==Current activities==		==Current activities==

Revision as of 05:49, 4 September 2007

Jesse Louis Jackson
Jesse Jackson, July 1, 1983
Born	(1941-10-08) October 8, 1941 (age 83) Greenville, South Carolina
Occupation(s)	American civil rights activist Baptist minister
Spouse	Jacqueline Lavinia Brown (m. 1962)
Children	Jesse Jackson Jr., Yusef DuBois Jackson, Jonathan Jackson, Sanitita Jackson, Jacqueline Lavinia Jackson Jr., Ashley(with Karin Stanford)
Parent(s)	Noah Robinson Sr., and Helen Burns

Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. (born October 8, 1941) is a professional 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. He is the father of Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr.

Early life

Jackson was born Jesse Louis Burns in Greenville, South Carolina to Helen Burns. Helen Burns was a single mother, aged 16, 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 was not 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 step-father.

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 to attend the racially integrated University of Illinois on a football scholarship. However, one year later, Jackson transferred to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (A&T) located in Greensboro. The change was based on the school's racial biases which included: Jackson being unable to play as a quarterback despite being a star quarterback at his high school and 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.

Jackson is a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity.

Civil rights leader

File:Livingstoneandjackson.jpeg

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

In 1965, Jesse 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.

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.

Beginning in 1968, Jackson increasingly clashed with Ralph Abernathy, King's successor as head of the national SCLC. 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, which later merged, in 1996, with Operation PUSH. The newly formed Rainbow PUSH organization brought the reverend's role as an important and effective organizer to the mainstream.

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.

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 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 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 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.
On February 15 2003, Jackson spoke in front of over one million people (estimate) 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

2004 presidential election

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. 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 Lacrosse team of raping her. Jackson had agreed to pay the rest of her college tuition regardless of the outcome of the case. The case against the Duke Lacrosse team was later thrown out after all charges were dropped against the three lacrosse players.

Jackson has taken 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, to which Jackson accepted Richards' apology and met with him publicly as a means of resolving the situation. Despite this, however, Jackson called for a ban on purchase of the newly released Season 7 DVD of Seinfeld, a TV show in which Richards starred. Many spectators considered this action both deceptive and irrelevant to 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 a poor suburb of Chicago, IL. 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 has made about Jews and Jewish issues: that Nixon was less attentive to poverty in the U.S. because "four out of five are German Jews and their priorities are on Europe and Asia"; that he was "sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust"; that there are "very few Jewish reporters that have the capacity to be objective about Arab affairs"; In addition Rev. Jackson had referred to Jews as "Hymies" and to New York City as "Hymietown" in January 1984 during a conversation with Washington Post reporter, Milton Coleman.

Extra-marital affair

In 2001, it was revealed that Jackson (married since 1962) had an affair with a staffer Karin Stanford that resulted in the birth of their 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.

Family

Wife: Jacqueline Lavinia (Brown) Jackson (m. 1962)
- Son: Jesse Jackson, Jr. (b. March 11, 1965)
- Son: Yusef DuBois Jackson
- Son: Jonathan Jackson
- Daughter: Santita Jackson
- Daughter: Jacqueline Lavinia Jackson, Jr.
- Daughter: Ashley (b. May 1999) (with Karin Stanford)

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.

Footnotes

External links

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