Civil Rights Leader Rev. Jesse Jackson to Speak at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson Sr. will give a lecture in the Hogan Campus Center Ballroom at Holy Cross at 7 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 16, in honor of Black History Month. Doors open at 6:15 p.m. The lecture, sponsored by the Holy Cross Black Student Union (BSU), is free and open to the public.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, president and founder of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, is one of America’s foremost political figures. Born on Oct. 8, 1941 in Greenville, S.C., he attended the University of Illinois on a football scholarship and later transferred to North Carolina A&T State University. After graduating, he attended Chicago Theological Seminary until he joined the Civil Rights Movement full time in 1965.

Rev. Jackson began his activism as a student leader in the sit-in movement and continued as a young organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as an assistant to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

He went on to direct Operation Breadbasket and subsequently founded People United to Save Humanity (PUSH) in Chicago in 1971. In 1984, he founded the National Rainbow Coalition, a national social justice organization devoted to political empowerment, education and changing public policy. In September 1996, the Rainbow Coalition and Operation PUSH merged into the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.

Rev. Jackson campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988. In 1990, he was elected to the post of U.S. Senator from Washington, D.C. In 1997, he was appointed by President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as “Special Envoy of the President and Secretary of State for the Promotion of Democracy in Africa.”

A renowned orator, Rev. Jackson has received numerous honors for his work in human and civil rights and for non-violent social change. In 1991, the U.S. Post Office put his likeness on a pictorial postal cancellation, only the second living person to receive such an honor. He has been on the Gallup List of Ten Most Respected Americans for the past ten years.

Since 1992, Reverend Jackson has hosted “Both Sides With Jesse Jackson” on Cable News Network. He is the author of two books: Keep Hope Alive (South End Press, 1989) and Straight From the Heart (Fortress Press, 1987).

Rev. Jackson lives in Chicago, Ill. with his wife Jacqueline Lavinia Brown. They have five children.