Keeping Hope Alive, A Retrospective of Service of the Reverend Jackson, Sr.

Rev. Jesse Jackson has announced that he will retire from his Rainbow PUSH Coalition, an international human and civil rights organization. We are saluting this historic leader for a lifetime of advancing civil rights and equality.

Rev. Jesse Jackson is a renowned civil rights icon. Founder and now former president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, Rev. Jackson is one of America's foremost civil rights, political, and religious figures. Over his career, he has played a pivotal role in many social movements including the civil rights movement, gender equality movement, movements for empowerment, peace, and social and economic justice. Reverend Jackson began his activism as a student in the summer of 1960 seeking to desegregate the local public library in Greenville and then as a leader in the sit-in movement. In 1965, he became a full-time organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He was soon appointed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to direct the Operation Breadbasket program. In December of 1971, Reverend Jackson founded Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity) in Chicago, IL. The goals of Operation PUSH were economic empowerment and expanding educational, business, and employment opportunities for the disadvantaged and people of color.

Rev. Jackson was born October 8, 1941 in Greenville South Carolina. He attended the University of Illinois on a football scholarship, before transferring to North Carolina A&T State University. After graduating in 1964, he began his theological studies at Chicago Theological Seminary, but deferred his studies when he began working full-time in the Civil Rights Movement with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was ordained on June 30, 1968 by Rev. Clay Evans and received his earned Master of Divinity degree from Chicago Theological Seminary in 2000.

For his work in human and civil rights and nonviolent social change, Reverend Jackson has received more than 40 honorary doctorate degrees. He was made an Honorary Fellow of Regents Park College at Oxford University in the UK in November 2007, and received an Honorary Fellowship from Edge Hill University in Liverpool, England. March 2010, Reverend Jackson was inducted into England’s prestigious Cambridge Union Society. April 2010, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. August 9, 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded Reverend Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Upon announcement of his retirement, President Biden said that Jackson has helped lead the nation forward "through tumult and triumph" and that Rev. Jackson is "a man of God and of the people; determined, strategic, and unafraid of the work to redeem the soul of our nation."