Holding hands with other prominent black leaders, Rev. Jesse Jackson crossed the Edmund Petus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 9, 2025 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday.” Like several survivors of that violent day in 1965, when police brutally attacked civil rights protesters, Jackson crossed the bridge in a wheelchair.
Jesse Louis Jackson was born on October 8, 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina. This time and place are not footnotes on Jackson’s life, but important facts that shaped his historical operations for his civil rights activities and historic president.
Growing up in a segregated South form, Jackson’s attitude, opinions and outlook remains clear today. He remained a Southern while living in Chicago for most of his adult life. And the other Southerners saw him like that.
Jackson’s biographer David Maciotra said South “had given Jackson a sense of oppression and persecution that he wanted to fight.”
As scholars of Southern politics, we consider Jackson’s southern identity to be essential to understanding his life. Southerners often equate the region with the geographical South, even after leaving the region. As sociologist John Shelton Reid once wrote, Southernness is more about attitude than latitude.
Isolated childhood
In Jackson youth South Carolina, water fountains, bathrooms, swimming pools and lunch counters were all separated. While a white man of his age attended Greenville High School, Jackson attended All-Black Sterling High School, where he was star quarterback and president of the class.
His experience of quarantine shaped how Jackson viewed his life.
“I’m continuing to think about the odds,” Jackson told his biographer, Marshall Frady of South Carolina in 1988, “I was surprised that the responsibility I was opposed to what I was expecting was being done at this stage.”
“Even the separation of the oars could not break into me and steal my soul,” he later told Frady.
If Jackson were white, a star student like him might have enrolled at Clemson University or the University of South Carolina. Or maybe he said yes when he was offered a contract to play professional baseball.
Instead, Jackson refused the contract. Because his salary was about six times lower than that of white players and he went north to the University of Illinois.
He didn’t find a more welcoming atmosphere in Champaign, Illinois. According to biographer Barbara Reynolds, the separation he thought he had left was “born in Illinois and convincing him that he wasn’t.”
In the fall of 1960, Jackson moved to North Carolina Agricultural Technology State University, a historically black university in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he earned a degree in sociology.
His return to the south marked Jackson’s emergence as a growing leader in the civil rights movement.
Greensboro was the heart of this struggle, with large, regular demonstrations, often led by local students of color. Six months before their arrival in Greensboro, four North Carolina black students refused to leave the White-only Woolworths Lunch Counter, and soon launched a sit-in movement that attracted the attention of the nation.
Jackson himself led the protests and integrated the Greensboro business. After one important student marched at city hall he was arrested and charged with inciting a riot. In prison, Jackson wrote a “Letter from Greensboro Prison.” This is the rhetorical tip of the hat to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from the Birmingham Prison.”
Move north
Jackson’s second move was stuck in 1964.
Like many other black southerners who later became known as “the second greatest migrant,” Jackson went to Chicago. He attended Chicago Seminary and was inspired by what Jackson was perceived as the ability of the church to do good on this earth, rather than a deep love for the Bible.
Dr. Sam Proctor, president of North Carolina A&T, advised Jackson. It may be because you want to see His kingdom come to Earth as it is in heaven. ”
Jackson thought his time in Chicago was “quiet and peaceful, and I can look back.”
That was nothing. Following the path of King and other religiously inspired civil rights activists, Jackson continued to organize civil rights and led the Kings’ initiative, Bread Basket, to boycott businesses that do not employ black workers.
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The President’s desire
Over the next few years, Jackson took on an even more prominent organisation that mimics the King’s life and work. As former King’s aide Bernard Lafayette once said, “I mean, he cloned himself from Martin Luther King.”
In 1984, Jackson turned to politics. He followed in the footsteps of Shirley Chisholm and his candidacy in 1972, becoming the second African-American to run for the country’s best office.
Announced his bid, Jackson “vowed to help restore moral tone, redeeming spirit and sensitivity to the country’s poor.”
But campaigns always represent more than a policy platform. Jackson wanted to mobilise more Americans to vote, especially running for “silence and oppressed.”
Jackson finished third in the 1984 Democratic primary, but in a very strong show, he won 18% of all primary votes. He performed particularly south of the Mason Dixon line, winning both Louisiana and the District of Columbia. He also worked well in the Mississippi and the South Carolina Democrat Caucus.
This incredible success has led Jackson to run for president again. In 1988 he got even better, winning nearly 7 million votes and 11 votes, sweeping the South during the major season.
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He won the South Carolina Caucus and Super Tuesday states in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia. On his second run, Jackson more than doubled from 5% in 1984 to 12% in 1988.
Jackson finished second in the Democratic primary against Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. However, Jackson’s powerful outcome solidified his position as a leading figure in American politics and the Democratic power broker.
A towering figure in American politics
Jesse Jackson’s two presidents have fundamentally changed the political landscape of the United States.
Beyond being the first black candidate to win the state’s primary contest, Jackson also helped end the major system in which state winners receive all state representatives. Jackson argued that the system hurts black and minority candidates and advocated for the implementation of the first recommended reforms following the 1968 Democratic primary.
At the time, parties were driving a system where representatives could be assigned based on the percentage of votes each candidate won, but that was not adopted by all states.
Since 1992, candidates who received at least 15% of the vote following Jackson’s intervention have officially received a portion of their representatives. These reforms have opened up the possibility that minority candidates could secure Democrat nominations through more proportional allocation of representatives.
Jackson’s background also strengthened the importance of the black church in black political mobilization.
Perhaps most importantly, Jackson expanded the size and diversity of voters, spurring the African-American generation to take office.
“The reason people like Jesse ran because they have the opportunity to run for president today,” Barack Obama said in 2007.
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The long Southern strategy
Jackson’s political rise coincided and perhaps encouraged the departure of racially conservative white voters from the Democrats.
The Republicans’ long Southern strategy – an opportunistic plan to nurture white voters in the South by leveraging “white racial insecurity” and conservative social values - was ongoing before Jackson’s presidential bid. However, his focus on social and economic justice has undoubtedly helped drive conservative southern whites into the GOP.
Today, some political thinkers question whether clear “Southern politics” continues to exist.
Jesse Jackson’s life and career reflects the importance of the place.
