Jesse Jackson’s SC roots made him what he became and inspired many

Jesse Jackson’s early roots in a staunchly pre-1970s segregationist South Carolina defined what became his charismatic activist life and led to him being an inspiration to many Blacks.

“We all know that Jesse Jackson was of national and international stature, but who he became was very much rooted in his experiences in South Carolina, and he never forgot that,” said Bobby Donaldson, head of the University of South Carolina’s Center for Civil Rights History and Research.

Those early roots included not being able to check out a book from the whites-only Greenville library system, having to sit in the back of a public bus and seeing two sets of drinking fountains — one for Blacks, and one for whites. Ordinary places such as movie theaters, restaurants and drug store lunch counters were for whites only or had separate seating for Blacks.

“That was the foundation he built upon later,” said Donaldson, adding that Jackson — a charismatic orator who was tall, outspoken, academically and athletically gifted, a natural organizer and leader — spent much of his adult life outside the state but kept returning to South Carolina through the years, advocating for various causes.

“He was always back here, doing activism, engaging with people,” said Donaldson. “He had a very strong network of people who are some of the Who’s Who in civil rights in this state today, including (the late) John Roy Harper, Cleveland Sellers, James Felder and (the late) Kevin Gray — all were part of the Jesse Jackson circle.”

In the 1980s, Jackson — working with others — took his quest for equal voting rights to then-Sen. Strom Thurmond’s home county of Edgefield and then to Thurmond’s Congressional office in Washington, D.C. Thurmond was in favor of a weak national voting rights law, according to writer Nadine Cohodas in her book, “Strom Thurmond and the Politics of Southern Change.”

“We don’t want to dominate, we want to participate,” Jackson told hundreds of civil rights protestors at the Edgefield County voting rights rally in June 1981, according to Cohodas’ book.

Besides advocating for equal voting rights, Jackson’s causes in South Carolina through the years included working for equal pay in the 1969 Charleston African American hospital workers’ strike and getting the Confederate flag off the State House dome and then off the State House grounds. In the hospital strike, Jackson led a march of thousands through Charleston, according to Claudia Smith Brinson’s book, “Stories of Struggle: the Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina.”

In 2015, Jackson unsuccessfully called for the renaming of Tillman Hall, on the Clemson University campus, saying Tillman was an outspoken white supremacist who advocated brutality against Black people. The building is one of the most recognizable on the Clemson campus; Tillman was a founding trustee of Clemson.

Outside South Carolina over the years, Jackson broadened his message to include poor whites, victims of unequal pay, Mexican Americans, working class people, farmers and indigenous Americans.

Columbia lawyer I.S. Leevy Johnson, 83, one of the first two Blacks elected to the S.C. House in the 20th century, said of Jackson, “He improved the quality of life for all Americans. His work contributed to the enhancement of relationships between Blacks and whites in America. “

Jackson got his start in South Carolina, his education in North Carolina at what is now N.C. Agricultural and Technical State University and joined up with Martin Luther King Jr. in Georgia, noted Leevy Johnson, who was elected to the House in 1970.

“These three states profoundly impacted him because during those days he recognized inequality, discrimination and racism in America, and he was a visionary who thought this country could do better,” Leevy Johnson said. “He made a dramatic difference. Who would have ever thought a 1959 graduate of (Black segregated) Sterling High School in Greenville, S.C., would one day run for the presidency twice?”

Jackson’s bids to be president

An outspoken liberal, Jackson ran for president in 1984 and 1988, entering Democratic primary contests across the nation, winning millions of votes and upsetting many white Democrats and centrist Black Democrats, said longtime civil rights activist and former Vorhees University president Cleveland Sellers, 81.

Although he didn’t get his party’s nod either time (former vice president Walter Mondale won the Democratic nomination in 1984 and Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis won the nomination in 1988), Jackson showed a Black candidate could garner millions of votes and raise serious money, said Sellers, the father of CNN pundit Bakari Sellers.

In so doing, Jackson laid the groundwork for the successful presidential campaign of Barack Obama in 2008, the first Black to win the presidency, Sellers said.

Just as important, the presidential candidacy of Jackson — with his long held positive message of “I am somebody” — countered the harmful psychological effects of racists such as South Carolina’s Ben Tillman, a former governor and U.S. senator in the 1890s and early 1900s, who preached to wide audiences that Blacks were inferior to whites, Sellers said.

Leevy Johnson elaborated, saying, “Jackson demonstrated that he was just as competent as a white candidate. What that did was to motivate a lot of Black people to have confidence in him and in themselves.”

Marshall Frady, a journalist who wrote a 1996 biography of Jackson, “Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson,” wrote, “Not the least of his achievements was that after Frederick Douglass became the first black presidential candidate in a major party, receiving a single vote at the 1888 Republican convention, Jackson with the surprising seriousness of his campaigns had finally broken a long-abiding barrier by beginning to dispel in white minds, and those of blacks as well, the simple unthinkability of a black in the country’s highest office.”

Jackson’s bid in 1988 had another effect, writes South Carolina historian Walter Edgar. It “accelerated the flight of white Southerners from the Democratic Party.”

Jackson’s legacies

State Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland, (no relation to Jesse Jackson), said the late civil rights activist was likely the reason he got into politics.

When he was a junior at Benedict College, a historically Black college, Darrell Jackson said Jesse Jackson came to speak to students, and the two Jacksons talked.

“He inspired me to get involved in politics, which led me to run for student body president,” Darrell Jackson said. Jackson won the student body presidency and went on to work for S.C. Gov. Dick Riley and to work for Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns.

Bakari Sellers — Columbia attorney, former S.C. House member and current CNN news commentator — said of Jackson’s passing, “Our heroes are dying. Jesse is someone who really, really saw through to the humanity of people. I remember his conversations about how we all make up the American quilt, and we all make up what this country is.”

Jackson belongs in the pantheon of South Carolina African American fighters for civil rights including those who worked for equal educational and voting rights in the early and mid-20th century, said Sellers, 41, son of Cleveland Sellers.

Claiming Jackson

“Although Jesse Jackson’s larger work belongs outside the State of South Carolina, we should certainly claim him, as he claimed the state,” Donaldson said.

Outside of South Carolina, Jackson traveled the world on peacekeeping missions. He brought hostages out of Iraq, he got political prisoners released in Cuba, an African American pilot freed in Syria and three captured American soldiers in the Bosnia area released.

“His historic rescues have earned him worldwide respect and admiration as an advocate for human rights,” according to the 2007 book “Extraordinary People of the Civil Rights Movement.”

Jackson was part of King’s civil rights movement, but he was so much younger than leaders like King, that Jackson “became the legacy of the movement,” Donaldson said.

“He kept the movement alive and energetic long after the major figures had transitioned. He was one of the lieutenants who kept marching forward. Part of his appeal was that he had those credentials,” Donaldson said.

Tributes

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., praised Jackson for being a founder of the “momentous Rainbow PUSH Coalition – an intergenerational movement to uplift the ‘the voiceless and downtrodden.’ His passion to bring together all creeds is a testament to his vision of unity, oneness, and a nation under one accord.

“His historic presidential runs in 1984 and 1988 reflect his strong will, guiding faith, and motivation that anything is possible. A life lived defying odds, Rev. Jackson showed us that if we all work together – we can bend the arc of the moral universe and change history. Operation Breadbasket, anti-apartheid activism, voter registration, and corporate diversity were among just a few of his initiatives that advanced opportunity and equality for Black Americans.

“His vision is his legacy, and his teachings continue to inspire me as I continue the pursuit of justice and equality,” Clyburn said.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster posted on X called Jackson a “native son of South Carolina and an icon of the civil rights movement” who was “a prominent voice in our nation’s political and cultural dialogue.”

“At the appropriate time, I will direct the flags over the Capitol to be lowered to honor his legacy and memory,” McMaster posted.

Rep. Wendell Gilliard, D-Charleston, wrote that “Jackson was more than a leader of movements. He was a keeper of faith in moments when hope felt fragile, and a teacher to so many of us who were trying to find our footing in the long walk toward justice.”

Former Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin, the first Black to hold that post, texted, “Rev. Jackson was an icon. One of the last true bridges to Dr. King, he decided to carve his own path and inspire a new generation of Americans to think bigger and bolder about what it meant to be a truly empowered citizen.

“As a son of South Carolina, he had an outsized impact on all of us and will be sorely missed.”

This story was originally published February 18, 2026 at 5:15 AM with the headline "Jesse Jackson’s SC roots made him what he became and inspired many."