Jesse Jackson: “The Struggle Continues”

About the Author

The Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, one of the nation's most prominent civil rights leaders and spokespersons for African Americans, was born to a teenage single mother in Greenville, South Carolina, on October 8, 1941. After attending the University of Illinois and graduating from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, he devoted his energies to the civil rights movement by organizing sit-ins, marches, and other events with the goal of ending segregation. In 1965 he joined with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Throughout the 1960s he was especially active in Chicago, particularly in leading the SCLC's Operation Breadbasket, which pressured businesses to hire more minority employees. In 1971, frustrated with the conservatism of the SCLC and its leader, Ralph Abernathy, he resigned to form People United to Save Humanity (PUSH). Meanwhile, in 1968, he was ordained as a Baptist minister.

Jackson entered the political arena with a run for the presidency in 1984, only the second African American (after Shirley Chisholm) to mount a nationwide campaign for the presidency. He surprised observers by winning 3.3 million votes in the Democratic Party's primaries, finishing third behind Gary Hart and the eventual nominee, Walter Mondale. That year, too, he formed an organization called the Rainbow Coalition in an effort to unite a “rainbow” of minorities, the poor and working class, gays, and other oppressed groups in a political movement; the Rainbow Coalition and PUSH would merge in 1996. He carried his message of affirmative action, voting rights, social programs, and the war on drugs into the 1988 presidential campaign. If the success of his 1984 campaign was surprising, his run in 1988 stunned many observers by more than doubling his previous results. In his 1988 speech “The Struggle Continues,” he outlines many of his social preoccupations.

Throughout the 1990s Jackson continued to speak out on social concerns while serving a six-year term as a “shadow senator” in Washington, D.C. This was a post created by the district to push for statehood. After his term expired in 1996, Jackson turned his attention to American corporations, working to persuade them to include more minorities in higher level positions. Whenever newsworthy events occurred that had a bearing on race relations or the rights and condition of the African American community, Jackson spoke out. He remained in the public eye as a television and radio-show host and with speeches and magazine articles, such as his 2005 article in Ebony magazine, “The Fight for Civil Rights Continues.”