Jesse Jackson: Fighting for Civil Rights and Against Parkinson's

Photo: Jesse Jackson. Source: AOL.

Parkinson’s Diseases is a degenerative illness and long-term disorder of the central nervous system that largely and mainly affects the person’s motor movements. According to statistics, there are approximately more than 1 million Americans that are affected by the disease, and about 60,000 new cases are recorded every year, which does not include undetected and unreported cases. However, about 7 million people are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease worldwide.

From all the affected people worldwide, surely world-renowned celebrities and figures are no exemption from this unfortunate disease. Few of these famous people that are currently (or have bee) diagnosed with this degenerative disease are Muhammad Ali, Michael J. Fox, Billy Graham, Billy Connolly, Linda Ronstadt, Janet Reno, and many more.

With the long list of famous people diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a new addition to this list is a famous American civil rights activist, journalist, and a Baptist minister— Jesse Jackson. But before his untimely diagnosis, let’s get to know this remarkable man.

Jesse Jackson’s humble beginnings

Jesse Jackson was born on October 8, 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina. Jesse’s biological father, Neil Louis Robinson, was a former boxer. However, a year after his birth, his mother Helen Burns married Charles Henry Jackson and adopted his stepfather’s last name.

In his young years as a student, he attended Sterling High School in Greenville, which was racially segregated at the time. Despite this, he was elected as the class president, finished tenth in his class and earned letters and achievement in baseball, football, and basketball. The first college he attended was the University of Illinois, which was a predominantly white school that still was racially prejudiced at that time. Due to this problem, Jackson transferred to North Carolina A&T.

During his years at North Carolina A&T, he played as the quarterback of their football and was elected as the student body president. He then became a local civil rights activist in which he protested against segregated libraries, theaters, and restaurants. He then finished his college education with a bachelor’s degree in sociology.

Life as an activist

Even from Jackson’s early years, we see just how active he has been in fighting for African Americans' civil rights. In 1965, he decided to march alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama, also known as the Selma to Montgomery marches. Eventually, Jackson became a worker in King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference or the SCLC. Due to his impressive skills, King gave Jackson a role to establish the front-line office of SCLC in Chicago. In 1966, Jackson was the head of the Chicago branch of the SCLC’s economic arm known as Operation Breadbasket and succeeded as the national director in the year 1967.

Operation Breadbasket is an organization dedicated to improving the economic conditions of the black American population across the United States of America. Under Jackson’s leadership, he encouraged his people to boycott buying products and services from black-owned corporations that are operated by white-owned businesses. This movement is a means of pressuring those white-owned companies to hire black Americans.

As King was assassinated in the year 1968, Jackson worked on the SCLC’s Poor People’s Crusade in Washington, D.C. In the year 1971, he organized a five-day Black Expo in Chicago, which was a trade and business fair that helped promote black capitalism and grassroots in political power. The event was attended by a lot of black American businessmen from 40 states and other politicians.