On December 19, 1988, a group of Black leaders gathered for a press conference in Chicago. The main speaker was Reverend Jesse Jackson, among the first Black men to run officially for president of the United States. At that historic moment, Jackson urged Black Americans to embrace a name that reflected heritage as well as history. African American, he declared, was a more accurate and dignified description than Black. He pointed out that other ethnic groups—such as Asian Americans and Italian Americans—trace their identities to specific homelands.

“It gives people pride to have roots that go back into history,” Jackson declared. He said that it was time for his people to claim ties to the land of their origin,” notes author Brenda Wilkinson in Jesse Jackson: Still Fighting For The Dream (1990). Since then, there has been a marked shift in terminology.

The revered leader of the civil rights movement has breathed his last today. 

Jesse Jackson was born on October 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina. For the first two years of his life, he was raised by his teenage mother, Helen Burns, and his grandmother, Matilda Burns. When he was two, his mother married Charles Henry Jackson, who legally adopted him.

In the 1940s and 1950s, segregation defined daily life. Black children of his generation were treated as second-class citizens. The civil rights laws that Jackson and others would later fight to win had not yet been passed. Without those protections, life for Black Americans in the South was harsh and deeply unfair.

By ninth grade, Jesse was excelling academically and emerging as a leader. He was elected president of his class and president of the Honor Society. During these years, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was at the forefront of the struggle for equality. In 1954, when Jesse was 13, the NAACP won a landmark victory in Brown v. Board of Education, striking down school segregation.

At 14, Jackson learned of another historic protest: the Montgomery Bus Boycott. For 381 days, Black citizens in Montgomery refused to ride city buses to protest segregation and unfair treatment. The boycott was led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—who would one day become Jackson’s hero.

Jackson became a devoted follower of King and an important figure in the civil rights movement. He embraced King’s philosophy of nonviolence, which student activists in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) studied under the leadership of activist James Lawson.

At Vanderbilt University,  Tennessee, Lawson conducted workshops on nonviolent resistance. Having served as a missionary in India, he was influenced by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. This training prepared students such as Jackson to conduct peaceful demonstrations.

Jackson quickly joined the student sit-ins and distinguished himself as a powerful speaker and organizer. When the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) staged major demonstrations in Greensboro in 1963, Jackson helped mobilize students. Through this work, he met leading civil rights figures. During this period, he also met Jacqueline Lavinia Brown, who shared his commitment to the movement. They later married in his parents’ home in Greenville.

After graduating in 1963, Jackson felt called to the ministry. In 1966, he began working closely with Dr. King. Although segregation was strongest in the South, King believed the struggle for justice had to become national. He appointed Jackson director of Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, a program of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) that focused on economic opportunity for the poor.

When King was assassinated in 1968, riots broke out in cities across the country. Jackson returned to Chicago and called for calm. “I am calling for nonviolence in the homes, on the streets, in the classrooms, and in our relationship with one another,” he said, as cited by Wilkinson. “I’m challenging the youth of today to be nonviolent as the greatest expression of faith they can make in King—Put your rocks down, put your bottles down.”

Jackson carried King’s vision into politics. In November 1983, he formally announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. He organized his supporters under the banner of the Rainbow Coalition, a movement he described as representing the “left-outs”: “Blacks, poor whites, women, Hispanics, Arabs, Asians, and Native Americans. Red, yellow, black and white—we’re all precious in God’s sight!”

As Wilkinson notes, Jackson promised new leadership, justice for the poor, and peace in the world. Although his 1984 campaign energized millions of voters and expanded political participation among minorities, he did not win.

Undeterred, Jackson ran again in 1988, once more pledging to represent the underclass—the poor, the homeless, and the uneducated of all races. This time,he emerged as one of the top Democratic candidates. Though he ultimately fell short of securing the nomination, Wilkinson argues that Jackson came closer than any Black candidate before him. 

For the “left-outs,” his rise signaled that a new quilt of America was being woven—one stitched with broader patches representing people of every race and background. As Jackson suggested, there would be larger spaces for those long excluded. Among them, he hoped, future leaders would emerge. Today, the title of Wilkinson’s book feels more resonant than ever: Jesse Jackson: Still Fighting for the Dream.