Jesse Jackson was born on October 8, 1941, in Greenville, SC during the height of Jim Crow segregation in the American South, a backdrop that heavily shaped his later activism.

He was born Jesse Louis Burns and was raised primarily by his mother and stepfather, Charles Henry Jackson, whose surname he later adopted. His biological father was a married man in his thirties, while his mother was an 18-year-old high school student.

As a teenager, he excelled academically and athletically, becoming class president and a standout football player.

He initially attended the University of Illinois on a football scholarship but transferred after becoming more interested in social activism.

He graduated from North Carolina A&T State University in 1964, a campus that had been central to the sit-in movement just a few years earlier.

While in college, he became active in the Civil Rights Movement and quickly caught the attention of national leaders.

He worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr. and joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, eventually becoming a key field organizer.

In 1966, he was put in charge of the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket, an SCLC program focused on economic justice and pressuring companies to hire Black workers.

He was in Memphis on April 4, 1968, when King was assassinated while supporting striking sanitation workers.

After King’s death, Jackson emerged as one of the younger national voices working to carry forward King’s message of economic and racial justice.

In 1971, he founded Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) in Chicago, focusing on voter registration, business equity, and education initiatives.

He later created the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, expanding the idea of a “Rainbow Coalition” that brought together minorities, working-class whites, farmers, labor unions, and LGBTQ+ communities. His Rainbow Coalition concept was years ahead of its time in framing multiracial, cross-economic political alliances.

In 1984, he ran for the Democratic nomination for U.S. president, becoming the second African American to seek a major party nomination after Shirley Chisholm. During that campaign, he won several primaries and caucuses, proving a Black candidate could compete nationally in Democratic politics.

In 1988, he ran again and finished second in the Democratic primary race, winning 11 contests and millions of votes. His 1988 campaign significantly expanded minority voter registration and participation across the country.

Many political analysts credit his campaigns with helping pave the way for later candidates like Barack Obama.

In the 1990s, he served as a “shadow senator” for Washington, D.C., advocating for D.C. statehood and congressional representation.

He frequently traveled internationally to negotiate humanitarian releases of prisoners and hostages. In 1984, he traveled to Syria and successfully negotiated the release of a captured U.S. Navy pilot. He also went to Cuba and negotiated the release of American detainees, meeting directly with Fidel Castro. In the early 1990s, he traveled to Iraq to help secure the release of foreign nationals during tensions surrounding the Gulf War.

He was married to Jacqueline Brown since 1962, and their long marriage has spanned his entire public career.

His son, Jesse Jackson Jr., served in the U.S. House of Representatives for Illinois before resigning in 2012.

In 2000, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bill Clinton, the highest civilian honor in the United States.