In November 1983, Reverend Jesse Jackson announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination, becoming the second black presidential candidate (after Shirley Chisholm in 1972) to compete at the national level. In doing so, he claimed to be fighting for the rights of a “Rainbow Coalition” of various Americans – including blacks, whites, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans; men and women; straight and LGBTQ.
A longtime ordained Baptist minister and civil rights activist who had been a close aide to Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackson would try and fail twice to win the Democratic nomination, but drew a historic level of support, including received nearly 7 million votes in 1988. Although not without controversy – particularly over his use of derogatory language towards American Jews – his candidacies and vision ultimately helped register new voters and pave the way for a more progressive wing within the Democratic Party.
The roots of the civil rights movement
Reverend Jesse Jackson shakes hands at the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Freedom March, also known as the “March on Washington,” during his presidential race in August 1983 .
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Jackson became involved in the civil rights movement as a teenager and was first arrested in 1960 while demonstrating for a public library in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. In 1965, the year after graduating from college, he walked with King and others to Selma to demand black suffrage.
After leaving graduate school at Chicago Theological Seminary to join the King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Jackson became director of the organization’s economic arm, Operation Breadbasket. He traveled to Memphis with King in April 1968 and was with him at the hotel where he was murdered. After King’s death, Jackson clashed with other SCLC leaders and left the organization in 1971.
Announcement of the ‘Rainbow Coalition’
Jackson never completed his college education, but was ordained a Baptist pastor in a church in Chicago. As the founder of Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity, later known as People United to Serve Humanity), which sought to help black Americans improve their economic situation, Jackson increasingly drew attention to the national scene in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Jesse Jackson’s National Rainbow Coalition button.
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After Harold Washington won the Chicago mayoral election in 1983, becoming the city’s first black mayor, some Democratic Party leaders began to argue that the time had come for a black presidential candidate. Jackson stepped forward to answer that call. A diverse group of campaign aides joined him and his wife, Jacqueline, on the stage when he declared his candidacy. With the support of this “Rainbow Coalition,” Jackson said, he sought to “help restore a moral tone, a redemptive spirit, and a sensitivity to the poor and the dispossessed” to Reagan-era America.
Jackson’s use of the term “Rainbow Coalition” refers to the alliance of that name formed in the late 1960s by Fred Hampton, leader of the Chicago branch of the Black Panther Party, with the Puerto Rican group the Young Lords and the Young Patriots. , a group of poor white migrants from the Appalachian region. Hampton was killed in 1969 as part of the FBI’s COINTELPRO program (which also watched King for years).
As historian Robert Greene II wrote in the Washington postJackson’s National Rainbow Coalition, which emerged from his first presidential campaign, also drew on King’s efforts to unite various Americans in his campaign for the poor.
Controversy and DNC discourse
Delegates Lendra Alexander and Gwen Patton for Jesse Jackson at the 1984 Democratic National Convention held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
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As the sharpest critic of incumbent President Ronald Reagan in the Democratic arena, Jackson failed to garner widespread support from other black leaders, many of whom chose to back Walter Mondale for the 1984 Democratic nomination. He also lost support for his controversial stance towards American Jews, especially after using ethnic slurs in reference to Jews and New York in an interview with the Publish in January 1984. Amid the protests, Jackson was forced to apologize for his remarks, but continued to draw criticism for his past support for the Palestinian cause and his refusal to disown Louis Farrakhan, a black Muslim leader who had also made anti-Semitic remarks.
Yet Jackson achieved historic success in the 1984 presidential race, winning five primaries and caucuses for a total of over 3 million votes. Given a key niche at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco that summer, he memorably spoke of the nation’s (and party’s) diversities as a force: “America is … like a quilt.” , did he declare. “Many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.”
The future of the Rainbow Coalition
Reverend Jesse Jackson poses at Rainbow Push headquarters in Chicago on August 4, 2011.
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After Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro (the first woman to be named vice president by a major political party) lost significantly in the 1984 general election, Jackson’s vision helped shape a more progressive wing of the Democratic Party. He fared even better in his second presidential election in 1988, winning seven primaries and four caucuses and nearly 7 million votes, and finishing second behind final candidate Michael Dukakis.
Jackson never rode another presidential race, but continued his work in the name of racial and economic justice, merging his National Rainbow Coalition with PUSH to form the Rainbow / PUSH Coalition in the 1990s. During this time, his success Encouraging black voter registration and political engagement in his two presidential campaigns paved the way for a new generation of black leaders, while his inclusive vision has come to form a vital part of the modern Democratic Party.
