Jesse Jackson

On the night of July 19, 1988, under the hot glare of TV lights, the Rev. Jesse Jackson stood before thousands of people gathered for the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta and delivered a speech that former president Jimmy Carter called “the best speech ever given at a convention, certainly in my lifetime.” Although the Rev. Jackson's candidacy for U.S. president had ended in disappointment only days earlier, he brought the crowd to its feet with a stirring, emotional address in which he reached out to the nation's poor and urged them to "keep hope alive!". By the time he finished, those who were not cheering were wiping away tears.

When he was born in October of 1941, few people would have guessed that Jesse Jackson would one day come closer to winning the White House than any other Aftrican American man in history. His mother, Helen Burns, was 16 years old and unmarried when Jesse was born. Two years later, she married a nam named Charles Jackson, who eventually adopted Jesse. Jesse's boyhood home in Greenville, South Carolina, was a three-room cottage with no running water and an outdoor toilet.

But early on, people knew Jesse was going to be special. In school he was an honors student and a top athlete in three sports. He was offered a scholarship to attend the University of Illinois, but after his freshman year he transferred to North Carolina A & T, a largely black school in Greensboro. There, he became active in the growing civil rights movement and he met Jacqueline Lavinia Brown – the woman who became his wife.

Soon Jesse Jackson was known as a leader in the struggle for racial equality. In 1965 he joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The civil rights organization created by Martin Luther King, Jr. The Rev. Jackson headed up the SCLC's efforts in Chicago and soon became an important aide to Dr. King. After King's assassination, in 1968, the Rev. Jackson continued his efforts to help blacks through organizations such as Operation Breadbasket and People United to Serve Humanity, or PUSH. In 1984, he ran for president for the first time, losing the Democratic nomination to Walter Mondale. In 1988, the battle was between the Rev. Jackson and Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis. Even though Governor Dukakis became the nominee, Jesse Jackson won several important state contests during the campaign.

In 1990, the Rev. Jackson ran for and won the post of "shadow senator" for Washington, D.C., which made him a non-voting member of Congress representing citizens in the District of Columbia. President Bill Clinton named the Rev. Jackson a special envoy to Africa in 1997. Today, Jesse Jackson is one of the nation's most articulate voices for African Americans and their concerns. He has inspired an entire generation of young people by challenging them to achieve and urging them to always remember “I am somebody!”

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