III.

Civil Rights Movement

Jackson moved to North Carolina just as the civil rights movement was gaining momentum on college campuses in the South. A year before he arrived, four A&T students had organized a sit-in, in which blacks pressured restaurants to integrate by waiting to be served at “whites only” lunch counters. The sit-in took place at a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro; sit-ins soon spread throughout the South. See also Civil Rights Movement in the United States

At A&T Jackson flourished, becoming quarterback for the football team. He also gained attention for his leadership and for his public speaking skills. Jackson was elected president of the student body, he organized student protests against racial segregation, and he served as an influential member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a civil rights organization. In 1963 police arrested Jackson after he led a protest march in Greensboro. Nearly a thousand supporters attended a mass meeting when he surrendered to authorities. This event solidified his position as one of the most important student leaders of the Southern civil rights movement.

In the summer of 1963 Jackson participated in the March on Washington, a massive civil rights demonstration, and heard Martin Luther King, Jr., deliver his famous 'I Have a Dream' speech. Soon after, Jackson was elected president of the North Carolina Intercollegiate Council on Human Rights, a new organization designed to coordinate student civil rights protests in the state. He also went to Las Vegas, Nevada, for a national convention of Young Democrats. At this meeting he met Willie Brown, who would later become speaker of the California state assembly and mayor of San Francisco, and Harold Washington, who would be the first black mayor of Chicago.

Jesse Jackson received his bachelor of arts degree in 1964 and was admitted to Duke Divinity School, where he would have been one of the first African American students. Instead, he accepted a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation and enrolled in a graduate program at the Chicago Theological Seminary. He moved to Illinois with his wife, Jacqueline Brown, whom he had met at A&T and married in December 1964.

Jackson, along with many other Americans in 1965, witnessed the brutal beatings of civil rights demonstrators in Selma, Alabama. In response, he led a group of fellow divinity students to Selma, where two weeks later they participated in a protest march led by Martin Luther King, Jr., then president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In early 1966, Jackson left school to devote all his time to the civil rights movement. Dr. King became Jackson's mentor, and Jackson, in turn, became one of King's closest coworkers.

King encouraged Jackson’s career. In 1966 he asked Jackson to head the Operation Breadbasket project in Chicago. Jackson mobilized Chicago's poor black community and used economic pressure from black churches and community organizations to force local companies to end discriminatory practices and hire more black workers. Jackson was also involved in an unsuccessful effort to desegregate Cicero, a white working-class suburb of Chicago. In 1967 Jackson became national director of Operation Breadbasket. He was ordained as a Baptist minister the following year.

In April 1968 Jackson was with King and some of his followers at a Memphis, Tennessee, motel when King was assassinated. After King's death, tensions developed between Jackson and his SCLC colleagues. They could not agree on who should take King’s place and on what direction the movement should take. Jackson advocated working to change the economic conditions of Northern blacks, while other SCLC leaders wanted to focus attention on Southern race relations. A dispute about the events surrounding King's death also increased conflict within the SCLC leadership. Immediately after King's assassination, Jackson claimed to have been the last person to talk to King before he died and to have cradled his head after he was shot. Other SCLC leaders vehemently denied this and accused Jackson of lying in order to help his own career. Jackson's prominence, along with his aggressive leadership and failure to consult with other leaders, led to further friction within SCLC.