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Jesse Louis Burns adopted his stepfather's last name (charles Jackson), at about the age fifteen.
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After being a good high school student, and even a class president, Jesse Jackson attended the "University of Illinois" in 1959-1960 on a football scholarship. Being a high-school class president might have helped his becoming such an activist, and leader.
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Not long after attending UI, Jackson transferred to the predominantly black "Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina" in Greensboro, NC, and received a B.A. in sociology in 1964-1965. I connect to this event because i trannsferr schools alot.
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Still a civil rights activist, and an undergraduate, Jackson went to Selma, Alabama, to march with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,and became a worker in King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). I believe that this might have helped him learn how organizations work, and give him a better understanding.
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As an undergraduate, Jackson became a civil rights activist in 1965. I believe this helped shaped his becoming a minister, and him founding his own organization.
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Jackson helped found the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket, the economic arm of the SCLC, in 1966 and served as the organization’s national director from 1967 to 1971
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Jackson moved to Chicago in 1966, did graduate work at the Chicago Theological Seminary, and was ordained a Baptist minister in 1968 I connect to this because i move a lot.
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Jackson was in Memphis, Tennessee, with King when the civil rights leader was assassinated on April 4, 1968. I believe this might have helped motivate him to start his own organization.
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In 1971 Jackson formally resigned from the SCLC, after being accused of using the organization for personal gain
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1971 and founded Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), a Chicago-based organization in which he advocated black self-help and achieved a broad audience for his liberal views.
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After jackson became an advocate for African-Americans, and a national spokesperson, his voter-registration drive was a key factor in the election of Chicago’s first African American mayor, Harold Washington, in April 1983.
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In 1984 he established the National Rainbow Coalition, which sought equal rights for African Americans, women, and homosexuals.
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In 1996 the two organizations that Jackson founded merged together to create the
