today in black history

March 19, 2024

The all Black Texas Western University team made history, winning the NCAA basketball championship over Kentucky in 1966.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.

POSTED: September 07, 2008, 7:19 am

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Hon. Jesse L. Jackson Jr.
Illinois, 2nd District
U.S. House of Representatives
2419 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D. C. 20515
Ph: 202-225-0773
Fx: 202-225-0899
www.house.gov/jackson

7121 S. Yates Blvd.
Chicago, IL 60649
Ph: 773-734-9660
Fx: 773-734-9661





17926 South Halsted
Homewood, IL 60430-2013
Ph: 708-798-6000
Fx: 708-798-6160

Chief of Staff

Kenneth Edmonds
kenneth.edmonds@mail.house.gov
 
Legislative Director

Charles Dujon
charles.dujon@mail.house.gov


Representative Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. began service in the United States House of Representatives on December 12, 1995, as a member of the 104th Congress. He was the 91st African American ever elected to Congress.





















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Representative Jackson currently sits on the House Appropriations Committee, serving as the 4th most senior Democrat on the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies; the Vice-Chair, or 2nd most senior Democrat on the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs; and a member of the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies.

His leadership created the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health in 2001, hailed by many minority health experts as the most important civil rights legislation since the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Representative Jackson also secured funding for the Institute of Medicine’s 2002 report on health disparities, “Unequal Treatment.” In addition, Representative Jackson has served as a member of the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Institute of Politics Senior Advisory Board since 2000.

Prior to his congressional service, Representative Jackson served as the National Field Director of the National Rainbow Coalition. In this role, he instituted a national non-partisan program that successfully registered millions of new voters. He also created a voter education program to teach citizens the importance of participating in the political process, including how to use technology to win elections and more effectively participate in politics.

Born in the midst of the voting rights struggle on March 11, 1965, Representative Jackson spent his twenty-first birthday in a jail cell in Washington, D.C. for taking part in a protest against apartheid at the South African Embassy. He also demonstrated weekly in front of the South African Consulate in Chicago. Representative Jackson was on stage with Nelson Mandela during his historic speech following a 27-year imprisonment in Cape Town.

In 1987, Representative Jackson graduated magna cum laude from North Carolina A & T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Management. Three years later, he earned a Master of Arts Degree in Theology from the Chicago Theological Seminary, and in 1993, received his Juris Doctorate from the University of Illinois College of Law. He has also been awarded honorary doctorate degrees from the Chicago Theological Seminary, Governors State University, North Carolina A & T State University, Charles R. Drew Univ. of Medicine and Science, Meharry Medical College and Morehouse School of Medicine. Representative Jackson has co-authored A More Perfect Union: Advancing New American Rights (2001) with Frank E. Watkins. He has also co-authored Legal Lynching II (2001), It’s About the Money (1999) and Legal Lynching (1996).

Representative Jackson resides in the Second Congressional District of Illinois with his wife Sandi, Chicago’s 7th Ward Alderman, daughter Jessica Donatella, and son Jesse L. Jackson, III.

Source: U.S. House of Representatives

The 2nd Congressional District includes most of Chicago’s South Side and suburbs in Cook County to the south. It also includes the South Shore neighborhood that was once heavily Jewish but where middle class Blacks now reside. The district is 62 percent Black and 26 percent white, with a poverty rate of 15.2 percent. The median income is $41,000.

 

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