Jesse Jackson

Jesse Jackson is an American civil-rights activist, Baptist minister, and politician whose six-decade career has produced one of the foundational figures of late-20th and early-21st-century American African-American civil-rights movement — particularly his 1971 founding of Operation PUSH (later renamed the Rainbow PUSH Coalition) and his two Democratic Party presidential primary campaigns (1984 and 1988). He was born Jesse Louis Burns on October 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina. His biological father Noah Louis Robinson was a married next-door neighbor of his mother (and was absent from his early-life), and his mother Helen Burns was a 16-year-old high-school student at the time of his birth. His mother subsequently married postal worker Charles Henry Jackson when Jesse was one, and Charles Jackson legally adopted Jesse at age two — producing his current legal surname.

His education at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (1959–1960; without earning a degree, after a substantial racial-discrimination experience produced his transfer) and the North Carolina A&T State University (B.A. in Sociology, 1964) launched his early-career path. His college football career at North Carolina A&T as a starting quarterback shaped his early-career biographical narrative.

His 1965–1966 ordained ministry training at the Chicago Theological Seminary (without earning a Master of Divinity degree, although he was subsequently ordained as a Baptist minister in 1968) launched his early-career civil-rights career. His March 1965 participation in the Selma-to-Montgomery voting-rights march under Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) launched his mid-1960s American civil-rights movement public profile.

His December 1971 founding of Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity, later renamed People United to Serve Humanity) — at the Chicago Theological Seminary chapel — launched his 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s American civil-rights and African-American economic-equality public profile. His 1984 Democratic Party presidential primary campaign — across which he won 18% of total Democratic primary votes and 384 first-ballot delegates at the July 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco — and his subsequent 1988 Democratic Party presidential primary campaign — across which he won 29% of total Democratic primary votes and 1,219 first-ballot delegates at the July 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta (the second-place finish behind eventual nominee Michael Dukakis) — produced his 1980s and 1990s American African-American national-political public profile. He has been with American businesswoman Jacqueline Lavinia Brown since 1962. He has five children.

His name Jesse derives from the Hebrew Yishai meaning "gift" — the Old Testament name of the father of King David. Jesse was the most-popular American unisex name through the late 19th century.