Jesse Jackson turned down a pro baseball contract that paid 6x less than a white player. Here’s how segregation shaped him

Holding hands with other prominent Black leaders, the Rev. Jesse Jackson crossed the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 9, 2025, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday.” Like several survivors of that violent day in 1965, when police brutally attacked civil rights protesters, Jackson crossed the bridge in a wheelchair.

Jesse Louis Jackson was born Oct. 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, a town firmly entrenched in the racially segregated Deep South....