From mom-and-pops to Goldman Sachs, Jesse Jackson’s vision for American business sparked a revolution

Civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson, who died at 84 on Tuesday, may be best known as a political organizing powerhouse, but he began his career by increasing workplace diversity in the business world. 

In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference handpicked a 24-year-old Jackson to lead a campaign to increase economic opportunity for Black Americans in Chicago. The cause remained a strong throughline of his six-decade-long career. 

A heavyweight with few equals today...