I first met Jacqueline Jackson many decades ago at the Chicago Urban League’s Golden Fellowship Event. Both of us, in our early twenties, had ducked into the ladies’ room to touch up our lipstick. We got into a conversation about children. Both of us had one child each and she told me that she planned to have four more. Our paths have crossed often since then, most recently both of us promising to purchase each other’s books.
Jacqueline Jackson is known to many as the wife of Reverend Jesse Jackson and the First Lady of Rainbow PUSH. She has raised five wonderfully successful children. But what a lot of people may not know about Jacqueline Jackson is that she is a leader and activist in her own right, advocating for justice throughout the world.
Those who attend PUSH regularly may recall Reverend Jackson from time to time spoke of how his wife had hosted many dignitaries throughout the years in their home and how she has traveled with him on diplomatic missions to many foreign countries. Yet she has also taken on many foreign missions on her own;
Jacqueline Jackson was one of the first, if not the first, African American women to become directly involved in trying to eliminate America’s “no talk” policy toward the Palestinian people. She led delegations of women to Palestine who, as a result, began to discuss the issues on radio talk shows and began to reach out to the Arab community. In many ways that delegation was instrumental in putting the kind of pressure on our government that ultimately ended the no-talk policy. She even urged Andrew Young, who was then America’s United Nations Ambassador, to take a firm position on the issue.
He stood up for the cause, even though it led to his resignation. Fast forward to the present, where the International Court of Justice has found Israel guilty of genocide, killing over 40,000 Palestinians to date, 70 percent of whom are women and children, and starving millions, and Operation PUSH has hosted a “Call to Action,” with a weekend of speakers providing information on the assault on Palestine.
Jacqueline also became involved in Ethiopia’s famine. A famine which caused a lot of starvation and loss of a lot of lives. Jacqueline took a delegation of women to Ethiopia. They spoke on radio and talk shows to make the American public aware of the starvation that was taking place in Ethiopia, and they also went to the Department of Agriculture to put pressure that department’s leadership into releasing food for people who were enduring the drought.
Throughout the years, Jacqueline has been involved, whether it was in South Africa or whether it’s been taking a stand against the atrocities that were committed in El Salvador during the 80’s, or bringing America to place pressure on the Sandinista government under Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, she never hesitated to speak up if she felt America was taking unfair advantage of people. She has stated that “It’s because of our tax dollars that we are in a position to prevent them from invading people, and preventing them from allowing people to starve, and to eliminate unfair policies.”
For a very long time, Mrs. Jackson has protested America’s embargos and restrictions on Cuba. She once stated that “It’s such a small country I don’t see where it can threaten the hundreds of million people living in the United States.”
Jacqueline Jackson feels that it’s all part of her lifetime commitment to teach America to be a good neighbor and to be sensitive to others, whether it’s Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, or Jamaica,
Years ago, she spoke about the sanctions that the United States has placed on Venezuela, which, over the years has caused the country to become literally unlivable. She rightly predicted those many years ago that as Venezuelans flee the squalor and resultant violence and come to the United States, our cities would soon be experiencing a migrant disaster.
