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| Source:Wikipedia- U.S. Shadow Senator Jesse L. Jackson (Democrat, Washington DC) 1991-97. |
"Jesse Louis Jackson (né Burns; born October 8, 1941) is an American political activist, Baptist minister, and politician. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as a shadow U.S. senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997.
He is the founder of the organizations that merged to form Rainbow/PUSH. Former U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. is his eldest son. Jackson hosted Both Sides with Jesse Jackson on CNN from 1992 to 2000.
Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina, to Helen Burns (1924–2015), a 16-year-old high school student and her 33-year-old married neighbor, Noah Louis Robinson (1908–1997). His ancestry includes Cherokee, enslaved African-Americans, Irish planters, and a Confederate sheriff.[1][2] Robinson was a former professional boxer who was an employee of a textile brokerage and a well-known figure in the black community.[3][4][5] One year after Jesse's birth, his mother married Charles Henry Jackson, a post office maintenance worker who later adopted the boy.[3][4] Jesse was given his stepfather's name in the adoption, but as he grew up he also maintained a close relationship with Robinson. He considered both men to be his fathers.[3][4]
As a young child, Jackson was taunted by other children about his out-of-wedlock birth, and has said these experiences helped motivate him to succeed.[3][4] Living under Jim Crow segregation laws, Jackson was taught to go to the back of the bus and use separate water fountains—practices he accepted until the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955.[4] He attended the racially segregated Sterling High School in Greenville, where he was elected student class president, finished tenth in his class, and earned letters in baseball, football and basketball.[6]
Upon graduating from high school in 1959, he rejected a contract from a minor league professional baseball team so that he could attend the University of Illinois on a football scholarship.[5][7] After his second semester at that predominantly white school, Jackson transferred to North Carolina A&T, a historically black university in Greensboro, North Carolina. Accounts of the reasons for this transfer differ. Jackson has said that he changed schools because racial prejudice prevented him from playing quarterback and limited his participation on a competitive public-speaking team.[7][8]
Writing an article on ESPN.com in 2002, sociologist Harry Edwards noted that the University of Illinois had previously had a black quarterback, but also noted that black athletes attending traditionally white colleges during the 1950s and 1960s encountered a "combination of culture shock and discrimination".[8] Edwards also suggested that Jackson had left the University of Illinois in 1960 because he had been placed on academic probation,[8] but the school's president reported in 1987 that Jackson's 1960 freshman year transcript was clean, and said he would have been eligible to re-enroll at any time.[9]
At A&T, Jackson played quarterback and was elected student body president.[5] He became active in local civil rights protests against segregated libraries, theaters and restaurants.[10] He graduated with a B.S. in sociology in 1964, then attended the Chicago Theological Seminary on a scholarship.[4] He dropped out in 1966, three classes short of earning his master's degree, to focus full-time on the civil rights movement.[6][11] He was ordained a minister in 1968, and in 2000 was awarded a Master of Divinity Degree based on his previous credits earned plus his life experience and subsequent work.
On July 16, 1960, while home from college, Jackson joined seven other African Americans in a sit-in at the Greenville Public Library in Greenville, South Carolina, which only allowed white people. The group was arrested for "disorderly conduct". Jackson's pastor paid their bond, the Greenville News said. DeeDee Wright, another member of the group, later said they wanted to be arrested "so it could be a test case.” The Greenville City Council closed both the main library and the branch black people used. The possibility of a lawsuit led to the reopening of both libraries September 19, also the day after the News printed a letter written by Wright."
From Wikipedia
I don't blog about Reverend Jesse Jackson because I tend to agree with him or like him politically, but because I believe he's one of the best political communicators (especially for a non-politician) that we've ever seen, as well as one of the best speakers.
Whatever you think of Reverend Jackson's politics (which are way to the left of me) you always know where the man stands and why he believes what he believes. Which is more than you can say about most American politicians who seem mostly interested only getting reelected or getting elected to a higher office.
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