Jesse Jackson

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jackson at the University of Chicago (2009)

Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. (* 8. October 1941 in Greenville , South Carolina , as Jesse Louis Burns ) is an American politician , activists , civil rights activist and Baptist minister .

In 1984 and 1988 he ran for the presidential candidacy of the Democratic Party and came third in the primary elections. From 1991 to 1997 Jackson served as  Shadow Senator  for the federal capital  Washington, DC, and thus held his first electoral office.

Childhood and youth

Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina . His parents were Helen Burns (1924-2015), a then sixteen-year-old student, and a married neighbor, thirty-three-year-old former boxer Noah Louis Robinson. A year after Jesse was born, Helen married Charles Henry Jackson, a postal worker who later adopted the boy. Jackson had already played baseball in school and a scholarship to good athletes enabled him to study. The identity of his biological father only became known to him as a student. A pronounced ego and a great striving for recognition in spite of his illegitimate origin is considered to be an essential drive for Jackson. His half-brother Noah Robinson was later sentenced to a millionaire as a businessman and then sentenced to long prison terms for drug dealing (see Black P. Stones or El Rukn in Chicago) and murder plots.

After attending the University of Illinois and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University , he began studying theology at the Chicago Theological Seminary and joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference under the leadership of Martin Luther King . He was present in the assassination attempt on King when he was shot dead in Memphis on April 4, 1968 . He was ordained even though he never graduated. His claim that King died in his arms turned out to be false. Jackson appeared on television in the days that followed wearing a bloodstained sweater.

activities

Jackson 1983

Jackson founded two nonprofit organizations in 1971 "PUSH" ( People United to Serve Humanity ) and in 1984 the "Rainbow Coalition" ( Rainbow Coalition ). Both groups were united in 1996. He was the most famous African American politician in the 1980s and became a civil rights advocate. Since Jackson also considered himself a lawyer for Africans , he visited Liberia, West Africa, in 1972, for example .

Jackson did, in the 1970s, particularly after the Roe v. Wade's decision to fight abortion , which is controversial in the black community , and religiously underpinned this with a PUSH campaign, among other things. He later supported the right to abortion without state interference.

Jackson was involved in several negotiations with foreign leaders to obtain the release of American prisoners. So he met Fidel Castro , Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milošević . In 1984 the naval pilot Robert Goodman was released from Syria . He turned down an offer to become ambassador to South Africa.

Jackson was known for his campaigns and was never elected to public office for decades. From 1991 to 1997 Jackson served as Shadow Senator for the federal capital Washington, DC ; this rather symbolic political office, which is officially elected in the federal district, is intended to underline Washington's efforts to obtain full voting rights in Congress . Jackson's son Jesse Jr. was a member of the House of Representatives also a politician and later sentenced to jail for abuse of campaign funds.

Jackson is also known as a passionate public speaker in the tradition of African American and Southern preachers. He spoke at the 1995 Million-Man March and participated in pro-democracy demonstrations in Florida during the 2000 election. He also appeared on several demonstrations against the Iraq war in 2003 .

Political commitment

In 1984 Jackson ran for the Democratic Party presidential nomination . With 3.5 million votes, he unexpectedly came third in the party primaries after Gary Hart and Walter Mondale , who won the nomination. His participation increased the importance of the black electorate for the party.

Jackson, who had previously tried to make the Republican party more open to black voters, subsequently experienced a clear break with conservative and Israel-friendly voters. Among other things, there were conflicts over Jackson's Arab connections. The so-called hymn incident - Jackson had described New York with an anti-Semitic catchphrase (hymn town) in a conversation with a black reporter for the Washington Post - was a severe setback for his campaign. He tried to make conciliatory gestures as a result, but relations with the Jewish community remained strained. His half-brother's connections and crimes also weighed on his campaigns. Bill Clinton later rejected a request from Jackson to pardon the half-brother, while approving other Jackson proposals for presidential pardons.

Also in 1988 he applied for the presidential candidacy. During his campaign, he argued that President Ronald Reagan's republican policies are turning back the clock for civil rights and the urban poor. He was able to significantly increase his result from 1984 to 6.9 million votes and was at times ahead with the delegate votes won. In the end he was defeated by Michael Dukakis despite winning 11 states .

Jackson, who has been married since 1963, had an affair with a young employee in 2001 that resulted in a child. This caused him to refrain from his activities for a short time.

At a demonstration in 1975

Intra-party positions

Jesse Jackson was initially critical of the " Third Way " or the more moderate policies of Bill Clinton . He nevertheless became an ally of Clinton for a time. At the so-called Sister Souljah moment , Clinton indirectly distanced himself from Jackson. In connection with the riots in Los Angeles in 1992, Souljah made the statement "If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?" caused a stir, Jackson had accepted her into his so-called Rainbow Coalition. Bill Clinton criticized both in public and thereby clearly set himself apart from extremists in his own party.

Jesse Jackson was critical of Barack Obama for a long time. In 2007 he accused him, among other things, of behaving like a white man. After a TV interview in 2008, Jackson said with the microphone still unknowingly switched on: "I would like to cut his balls off". At the victory celebration after winning the presidential election in Chicago on November 4, 2008, however, he was seen standing in the crowd and following Barack Obama's speech with tears in his eyes.

Honors

On 9 August 2000 handed President Bill Clinton Jackson the Medal of Freedom ( "The Presidential Medal of Freedom"), the highest civilian honor in the United States.

In 2002 Molefi Kete Asante made him one of the "100 Greatest African Americans".

reception

Short speeches by Jesse Jackson can be found on records as early as the 1960s. So the Reverend prefaced the live LP Country Preacher by the Cannonball Adderley Quintet . The jazz album was created during a fundraising event for Operation Breadbasket , which was run by Jackson . His combative exclamation “You got to walk tall, walk tall! Walk tall! ”(Something like“ Go upright your way! ”) Introduces the album and gives the first track its name.

When the record label Stax, which specializes in soul, organized a kind of black Woodstock with Wattstax on August 20, 1972 , Jesse Jackson was invited to speak. The Scottish band Primal Scream used parts of his welcome speech as the sole text elements in their ten-minute piece Come Together , to be found on the album Screamadelica (1991) produced by Andrew Weatherall . With his announcement of the vocal quartet The Soul Children and its piece I Don't Know What This World Is Coming To , Jesse Jackson also made it onto the associated festival sampler. The short excerpt “Brothers and sisters, I don't know what this world is coming to” has been sampled countless times , including by Public Enemy in Rebel Without a Pause and by M / A / R / R / S in Pump Up the Volume (UK Remix) . The page WhoSampled.com lists 149 titles.

His slogan "I am somebody!", Which he repeatedly chanted at the same event , introduces the song Hanna Hanna (1984) by the English band China Crisis .

In his Dub Basking In Colonialism (1995), British reggae dub artist Mad Professor used a short excerpt from Jackson's legendary Democratic National Convention Address from 1984: “Our mission: to feed the hungry; to clothe the naked; to house the homeless; to teach the illiterate; to provide jobs for the jobless; and to choose the human race over the nuclear race. "

Discography

Web links

Commons : Jesse Jackson  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Jesse Jackson  - Quotes
Wikisource: Jesse Jackson  - sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Joyce Purnick and Michael Oreskes: Jesse Jackson Aims for the Mainstream . In: The New York Times , November 29, 1987. 
  2. ↑ Ronald Smothers: NL Robinson, Jesse Jackson's Natural Father, Is Dead at 88 . In: The New York Times . January 30, 1997, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed January 2, 2017]).
  3. ↑ Life Term for Jesse Jackson's Half-Brother . In: The New York Times . August 23, 1992, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed January 2, 2017]).
  4. ↑ David T. Beito, Linda Royster Beito: Black Maverick: TRM Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power . University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Ill. 2009, pp. 206-216.
  5. ↑ a b Justin Elliott, (December 16, 2010) A White House campaign funded by… Libya? , Salon.com
  6. ^ Nation: Wooing the Black Vote . In: Time , January 30, 1978. 
  7. ↑ Gigi Anders: "Hymietown" Revisited. In: American Journalism Review ajrarchive.org. May 1999, accessed January 11, 2017 .
  8. ↑ BOB FAW, NANCY SKELTON: The 'Hymie' Incident: Jesse Jackson Claimed His Comments Were Harmless. But With a Few Phrases, He Tore at the Fragile Bonds Between Blacks and Jews. An Excerpt From a New Book Chronicling the Jackson Campaign. In: Los Angeles Times . October 19, 1986, ISSN  0458-3035 ( latimes.com [accessed January 11, 2017]).
  9. ↑ 2 Jackson Pals Won Clemency . In: tribunedigital-chicagotribune . ( chicagotribune.com [accessed January 2, 2017]).
  10. ↑ Page : Weaponized Umbrage . In: Culture Worrier: Selected Columns 1984-2014: Reflections on Race, Politics and Social Change . Agate Publishing, 2014, ISBN 978-1-57284-742-2 .
  11. ↑ Article: Jesse Jackson Criticizes Barack Obama - Like a White
  12. ↑ Article: Obama abuse - Jesse Jackson regrets verbal blow
  13. ↑ Whosampled: (Brothers and Sisters) I Do not Know What This World Is Coming To .
  14. ↑ Hanna Hanna on the China Crisis YouTube channel.
  15. ↑ Jesse Jackson: 1984 Democratic National Convention Address, July 18, 1984 ; on American Rhetoric - Top 100 Speeches .
  16. ↑ WhoSampled.com .
personal data
SURNAME Jackson, Jesse
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jackson, Jesse Louis (full name); Burns, Jesse Louis (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Baptist pastor, politician, and civil rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Greenville , South Carolina