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"J" is for Jackson, Jesse Louis (b. 1941)

South Carolina From A to Z
SC Public Radio

"J" is for Jackson, Jesse Louis (b. 1941). Minister, civil and human rights activist. A Greenville native, Jackson was a star quarterback and student leader at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro. In Greensboro he led a successful demonstration to end discrimination in downtown stores. In 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King put Jackson in charge of Operation Breadbasket in Chicago. Jackson successfully organized black Chicagoans to boycott companies and stores that had “heavy minority patronage” to secure better service and more jobs. In 1968 Jackson launched his own organization--PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity). He became a tireless crusader for social justice and for political inclusion, culminating with his two runs for the presidency in 1984 and 1988. During the 1990s, Jesse Louis Jackson was the United States’ special envoy to Africa.

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.