Jesse Jackson Net Worth

About Jesse Jackson

Around the end of the 1970s, Jackson began making extensive foreign travels to mediate or bring attention to conflicts in other parts of the world. He went to South Africa in 1979 and spoke out against apartheid; he also traveled to the Middle East in later years to advocate for Palestinian statehood amid the region’s violence. Jackson was praised for his efforts to secure the release of American hostages in countries including Syria (1984), Iraq (1990), and Yugoslavia (1999), despite criticism from onlookers and government officials who saw his operations as meddlesome and self-aggrandizing.

Jackson was born to an unwed adolescent mother in Greenville, South Carolina on October 8, 1941. Jackson has remarked that being teased by his peers about his illegitimate origins served as inspiration later in life. Living under Jim Crow segregation rules, Jackson was instructed to sit in the rear of the bus and use separate water fountains, both of which he did until the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. He attended the all-white Sterling High School in Greenville, where he was voted student body president, graduated tenth in his class, and received varsity letters in baseball, football, and basketball.

Jackson’s Total Net Worth

Jesse Jackson has earned estimated total career income of $11 million dollars. Of that amount, $450,000 is expected to have been paid in business related costs. The remainder, $10.55 million, will have been taxed at a rate of around 42% as Jesse Jackson has been residing in the state of South Carolina. After tax, it is estimated that his career earnings are at around $6.119 million dollars, having paid around $4.431 million dollars in taxes.

In his personal life, Jesse Jackson is estimated to have spent $1 million dollars of his career earnings but also probably possesses assets valued at around $350,000, not including investment assets. Some of his career income will have been converted into investment assets, his returns from which are being estimated at $1-2 million dollars in value. Therefore, it is estimated that Jesse Jackson has a net worth of around $7 million dollars.

Jackson attended the University of Illinois on an athletic scholarship in 1959 after graduating from high school as both valedictorian and president of his class. However, after only a year, he transferred to North Carolina A & T University in Greensboro and eventually returned to his home state of South Carolina. After moving to Greensboro, he became involved in the civil rights movement, joining the local Congress of Racial Equality chapter and taking part in sit-ins and other forms of direct action. As a young boy, Jackson was familiar with the activities of the SCLC and wrote to Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Dear Sir, I don’t think you’ll ever bring God to Albany, Georgia. Because He is patient enough to wait for the transformation that E=MC2 promises to bring.

A “combination of culture shock and discrimination” was what people in the 1950s and 1960s had to deal with. Edwards also claimed that Jackson had dropped out of college in 1960 due to academic probation, but in 1987 the university president declared that Jackson’s transcript from his first year was spotless and that he was welcome back to campus at any time.

When James Bevel, Martin Luther King Jr., and others led the Selma to Montgomery marches in Alabama in 1965, he was there. King was impressed by Jackson’s drive and organizational ability, and he immediately began giving Jackson a role in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), despite King’s concerns about Jackson’s seeming ambition and attention-seeking. When Jackson got back from Selma, he was put in charge of opening up a SCLC field office in Chicago.

Jackson served as the national director of the SCLC’s economic arm, Operation Breadbasket, from 1967 to 1971 after having helped found the Chicago chapter in 1966.

Jackson quickly quit his seminary studies to devote himself full-time to King’s cause, and he took on the role of coordinating SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket in the Chicago area. We thought he was going to do a good job, but he’s done better than a good job,” King said of Jackson’s performance as Breadbasket’s leader. Shortly after, Jackson became the head of Operation Breadbasket on a nationwide scale. In front of a crowd in Chicago, King proclaimed that Jackson was “more effective” than anyone else (King, 6 January 1968).

After King’s death on April 4, 1968, Jackson became embroiled in SCLC leadership issues. Jackson, who was one level below at the assassination of King, was in the parking lot. According to Jackson’s statements to the press, King died in his arms and he was the last person to speak to him. The New York Times stated in 1969 that Jackson was one of the few black campaigners preaching racial peace and that he was seen as King’s successor by some prominent black figures.

Charles “Chuck” Jackson, Michael’s younger brother, was a singer who released two albums in the late ’70s, both with his group The Independents and as a solo artist. He and Marvin Yancy, his co-writer and co-producer, are largely responsible for Natalie Cole’s early success. Abernathy asked Jackson to relocate Operation Breadbasket’s national office from Chicago to Atlanta in the spring of 1971 and tried to put someone else in charge of the organization’s Chicago operations, but Jackson refused. In October of 1971, he planned the Black Expo that was held in Chicago.

However, Jackson’s early stance on abortion was more in line with pro-life ideas, despite his reputation as one of the Democratic Party’s most liberal members. Jackson launched the PUSH movement less than a month after the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade legalized abortion. He called abortion “murder” and suggested that the births of Jesus and Moses would have been prevented if abortion had been permitted in ancient times.

Jackson supported a proposal to outlaw abortion via constitutional amendment in 1975. Additionally, he supported the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal Medicaid funds from being used to pay for abortions. Jackson stated that the right to privacy was the basis for Roe v. Wade in a 1977 news report by the National Right to Life Committee. Jackson lamented what he saw as an increase in senseless killing and a general fall in moral standards.

In 1978, Jackson urged African Americans to strengthen ties with the Republican Party, addressing the party’s national committee that “We, the African-American community, need the Republican Party to compete for us so that we have genuine choices… If it wants to be taken seriously for national office, the Republican Party needs to attract and retain members of the black community.”

A recipient of the 1979 Jefferson Award for Outstanding Public Service Benefiting the Poor, Jackson was honored for his dedication to helping those in need. Jackson received the NAACP’s President’s Award in 1988, and the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal in 1989.

Jackson was honored for his public service with the James Madison Award from the American Whig-Cliosophic Society in 1991. Journalistic honors came his way in 1999 when the Italian Research Institute Archive Disarmo presented him with the Golden Doves for Peace.

In August of 2000, Clinton presented Jackson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest honor for a citizen. Michael Jackson was named one of the 100 greatest African Americans by academic Molefi Kete Asante in 2002. Edge Hill University honored Jackson with an Honorary Fellowship in 2008. Jackson was named “Black Voices” by respondents to an AP-AOL “the most important black leader” survey in February 2006.

Michael Jackson passed on to his son the title of High Prince of the Agni people of Côte d’Ivoire. Amon N’Douffou V, King of Krindjabo, who rules over a million Agni tribespeople, anointed him Prince Côte Nana in August 2009.

Jackson was awarded France’s highest civilian honor, the Legion of Honor, by President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 for his efforts in the civil rights movement. Jackson was made an Honorary Fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge in December 2021.