In 1966 King and Bevel selected Jackson to head the Chicago branch of the SCLC's economic arm, Operation Breadbasket and he was promoted to national director in 1967. When Jackson returned from Selma, he was charged with establishing a frontline office for the SCLC in Chicago. Impressed by Jackson's drive and organizational abilities, King soon began giving Jackson a role in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), though he was concerned about Jackson's apparent ambition and attention-seeking. In 1965 he participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches organized by James Bevel, King and other civil rights leaders in Alabama. Jackson has been known for commanding public attention since he first started working for Martin Luther King Jr. The possibility of a lawsuit led to the reopening of both libraries September 19, also the day after the News printed a letter written by Wright.
DeeDee Wright, another member of the group, later said they wanted to be arrested "so it could be a test case." The Greenville City Council closed both the main library and the branch black people used. Jackson's pastor paid their bond, the Greenville News said. The group was arrested for "disorderly conduct". On July 16, 1960, while home from college, Jackson joined seven other African Americans in a sit-in at the Greenville Public Library in Greenville, South Carolina, which only allowed white people.
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He was ordained a minister in 1968 and was awarded a Master of Divinity Degree in 2000 based on his previous credits earned plus his life experience and subsequent work. He dropped out in 1966, three classes short of earning his master's degree, to focus full-time on the civil rights movement.
in sociology in 1964, then attended the Chicago Theological Seminary on a scholarship. He became active in local civil rights protests against segregated libraries, theaters, and restaurants. Īt A&T, Jackson played quarterback and was elected student body president. Edwards also suggested that Jackson had left the University of Illinois in 1960 because he had been placed on academic probation, but the school's president reported in 1987 that Jackson's 1960 freshman year transcript was clean and said he would have been eligible to re-enroll at any time. Writing an article on in 2002, sociologist Harry Edwards noted that the University of Illinois had previously had a black quarterback, but also noted that black athletes attending traditionally white colleges during the 1950s and 1960s encountered a "combination of culture shock and discrimination". Accounts of the reasons for the transfer differ, though Jackson has said that he changed schools because racial prejudice prevented him from playing quarterback and limited his participation on a competitive public-speaking team. After his second semester at the predominantly white school, Jackson transferred to North Carolina A&T, a historically black university in Greensboro, North Carolina.
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Upon graduating from high school in 1959, he rejected a contract from a minor league professional baseball team so that he could attend the University of Illinois on a football scholarship. He attended the racially segregated Sterling High School in Greenville, where he was elected student class president, finished tenth in his class, and earned letters in baseball, football, and basketball. Living under Jim Crow segregation laws, Jackson was taught to go to the back of the bus and use separate water fountains-practices he accepted until the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955. Īs a young child, Jackson was taunted by other children about his out-of-wedlock birth and has said these experiences helped motivate him to succeed. He considered both men to be his fathers. Jesse was given his stepfather's name in the adoption, but as he grew up he also maintained a close relationship with Robinson. One year after Jesse's birth, his mother married Charles Henry Jackson, a post office maintenance worker who later adopted the boy. Robinson was a former professional boxer who was an employee of a textile brokerage and a well-known figure in the black community. His ancestry includes Cherokee, enslaved African-Americans, Irish planters, and a Confederate sheriff. Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina, to Helen Burns (1924–2015), a 16-year-old high school student, and her 33-year-old married neighbor, Noah Louis Robinson (1908–1997).