Race/Related: How Jesse Jackson took King’s civil rights movement to company doorsteps
Jesse Jackson helped Dr. King turn fights for equality in the South into a national movement.
Race/Related
February 20, 2026

By 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. had grown troubled by what he saw in the North, where poverty remained entrenched in segregated urban ghettos. To expand what he saw as a broader, national fight for economic equality, Dr. King knew the person he wanted to spearhead the effort in Chicago — a 24-year-old seminary student named Jesse Jackson.

Six men, including Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King Jr., sitting on chairs and talking.

Chicago Sun-Times collection, via Chicago History Museum

Read more on the late Jesse Jackson’s civil rights legacy here. →

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