Title
Recognizing and honoring the life of trailblazing Civil Rights leader, dedicated public servant, and lifelong activist, Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Body
WHEREAS, Jesse Louis Jackson (n?e Burns) was born on October 8, 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina to Helen Burns and Noah Louis Robinson in the segregated South; and
WHEREAS, Jesse Jackson attended North Carolina A&T State University in where he graduated in 1964 with a Bachelors of Science in Sociology, played quarterback, and served as student body president; and
WHEREAS, Reverend Jackson was ordained a minister in 1968 after having attended Chicago Theological Seminary. He left Seminary with merely a few courses left to focus full time on the Civil Rights Movement, but was awarded a Master of Divinity degree by the Seminary in 2000 to honor his life's work; and
WHEREAS, Jesse Jackson began his life of activism in 1960 with a sit-in at the Greenville Public Library in his hometown, which only allowed white people. He worked closely with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. including in the Selma to Montgomery marches and in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), being charged with leading SCLC in Chicago; and
WHEREAS, He was the national director of Operation Breadbasket, the economic arm of SCLC. Operation Breadbasket began as a job placement agency for Black Americans, but under Jackson's leadership, expanded to organizing boycotts of white-owned businesses to increase their hiring of Black workers; and
WHEREAS, Jesse Jackson was present at Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968, but continued his legacy working to organize SCLC's Poor People's Crusade in Washington D.C. He also organized the Black Expo in Chicago in 1971, highlighting Black businesspeople as an economic engine; and
WHEREAS, In 1971, Reverend Jackson established People United to Save Humanity (Operation PUSH) to build power for economic and social justice. Eventually, PUSH merged with the Rainbow Coalition, another org...
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