Jesse Louis Jackson's Page

 General Profile: I was born in Greenville, South Carolina, October 8th 1941. I was born as Jesse Louis Burns, to my parents, Helen Burns who was just a high school student when I was born and Noah Robertson, a 33-year-old married man who was her neighbor, they never married. A year after my birth, my mother married Charles Henry Jackson, a post office maintenance worker, who later adopted me. In the small, black-and-white divided town of Greenville, I quickly learned early what segregation looked like. My mother and I always had to sit in the back of the bus. The world was a different place for a little black boy. Even school was separated. All the young white boys and girls got a beautiful playground, and green grass. We didn't even get grass. "There was no grass in the yard, I couldn't play, couldn't roll over because our school yard was full of sand. And if it rained, it turned into red dirt."

http://www.biography.com/people/jesse-jackson-9351181

Quotation:

"Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change"

"When we're unemployed, we're called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it's called a depression."

Education: I was a pretty good student in high school, I was elected class president and later attended the University of Illinois (1959–60) on a football scholarship. Then I transferred to the predominantly black Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina in Greensboro and received a B.A. in sociology (1964). I moved to Chicago in 1966, did graduate work at the Chicago Theological Seminary, and was ordained a Baptist minister in 1968. 

My Family: I have somewhat of a large family. I have two siblings, Noah Robinson Jr. and Chuck Jackson. And then I have six kids of my own, Jesse Jr., Santita, Jonathan, Yusef Dubois, Jacqueline Lavinia and Ashley Laverne. Now Ashley is just as much my daughter as the rest of my kids, I love them all the same and I mean that. But im not too proud of what I had done. I had an affair with Karin Stanford in 1999, she gave birth to my beautiful daughter Ashley in 2001. I had a life of my own, a wife, kids. I couldn't drop lose everything because I had another child with another woman but I did what i had to do. I paid the court ordered child support and visited Ashley (and Stanford) at their California home regularly over the past decade. Some things happened and Karin hated that i wasn't completely dedicated to her and Ashley and told the court I haven't paid her child support in months, just to stir up trouble. Stanford filed court documents accusing myself of failing to pay child support from December 2010 until August 2011, including a monthly $400 fee. I have five grown children, and despite the mistakes i have made along the way, my beautiful wife has stayed faithful to me the whole time. I am a blessed man. 

Organizations and Memberships:

The same year I left the SCLC, I founded Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity). I created the organization, based in Chicago, in order to advocate black self-help and in a sense serve as my political pulpit. In 1984, I also established the National Rainbow Coalition, whose mission was to establish equal rights for African-Americans, women and homosexuals. The two organizations merged in 1996 to form the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. 

http://www.biography.com/people/jesse-jackson-9351181?page=3

Profession: While I was an undergraduate, I became involved in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1965 I went to Selma, Alabama, to march with Martin Luther King Jr., and became a worker in King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). I helped found the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket, the economic arm of the SCLC, in 1966 and served as the organization’s national director from 1967 to 1971. I was in Memphis, Tennessee, with King when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, though his exact location at the moment he was shot has long been a matter of controversy. I was accused of using the SCLC for personal gain, and they suspended me from the organization. I  formally resigned in 1971 and founded Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity). In the 1980s Jackson became a leading national spokesman and advocate for African Americans.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/298824/Jesse-Jackson

Other Pertinent Information: I was involved in being the first African-American mayor in Chicago in 1983. I also  did many things for the Black community in 1976, I created the PUSH-Excel, this was a program for motivating teens and children to succeed.

Appropriate Webpage: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1726656_1726689_1726268,00.html

"Extraordinary African-Americans: From Colonial to Contemporary Times" By:Susan Altman  Page: 248

"America is like a quilt- many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread... all of us count and fit somewhere." 

Realizing that economic growth depended on political power, I began touring the country to encourage voter registration. I preached the same message everywhere: use  the power of the ballot box to elect officials who will be sympathetic to the needs of the poor, African-Americans in particular. 

Eventually I became interested in international affairs. In 1979, with the hope of establishing dialogue among the Jews, Arabs, Palestinians, and other hostile groups in the Middle East, I traveled to Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. I met with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Trying to bring Arab-Israeli peace, I accomplished little. But in 1984, I was able to draw on my friendship with Assad to obtain the release of U.S. Navy pilot Robert Goodman, who was taken prisoner after his plane was shot down during U.S. military operations in Lebanon. The same year, I vised Cuba and obtained the release of twenty-two Americans and twenty-six Cubans in prison there.