1941-
Candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. 1984 and 1988

Breaking New Ground.

The Reverend Jesse Jackson made history in 1984, when he campaigned to be the Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States. Though Democratic congresswoman Shirley Chisholm became the first black to seek the presidential nomination of a large, national party when she entered some Democratic primaries in 1972, Jackson was the first African American to wage a full-scale campaign to head a major-party ticket.

Background.

An illegitimate child born to an impoverished family in Greenville, South Carolina, Jackson graduated from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 1963. He went on to study at the Chicago Theological Seminary, dropping out in spring 1965, six months before his expected graduation, to be-come active in the civil rights movement. In 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King made Jackson head of Operation Breadbasket, a group that used boycotts and other sorts...