VI.

Recent Activities

During the Persian Gulf crisis, Jackson visited Iraq and helped speed the release of some American hostages in Kuwait. He was also elected to one of two unsalaried, nonvoting 'shadow Senate' seats created by the District of Columbia to lobby Congress for statehood. District of Columbia residents are not represented in the Senate, and thus the 'shadow Senators' are primarily lobbyists. Jackson did not mount a presidential bid in 1992 or 1996. Jackson's earlier runs had accomplished many of his goals: higher voter registration and turnout among blacks as well as recognition by whites that blacks could be viable national candidates. One measure of Jackson's success is that in 1996 many Republicans supported General Colin L. Powell, the first black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as a candidate for the party’s presidential nomination.

In 1997 the administration of President Bill Clinton gave him the title of Special Envoy for the President and the Secretary of State for the Promotion of Democracy in Africa. Jackson was a member of an official delegation that accompanied President Clinton to Africa in 1998. That year he also actively campaigned for Democratic candidates and helped the party gain seats in the House of Representatives. One of the victorious Democrats was the oldest of Jackson's five children, Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., who retained his congressional seat from Chicago.

In 1999 Jesse Jackson, Sr., led a delegation from the National Council of Churches to Serbia during the NATO offensive against Yugoslavia. Jackson met with President Slobodan Miloševićc in Belgrade, Serbia, and succeeded in obtaining the release of three American servicemen captured by Yugoslav forces during the NATO war to stop violence against ethnic Albanians in the Kosovo province of Serbia. In 2000 he was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.