When the Rev. Jesse Jackson arrived in Chicago in 1964, he came face to face with a segregated school system where Black and Latino students attempted to learn in schools so overcrowded that hallways became classrooms and supplies were scarce. He quickly jumped into the fight to end disparities in education — a cause he’d champion throughout his life.

Early on, he helped organize protests against the poor learning conditions. Later he founded PUSH Excel, a program backed by former President Jimmy Carter’s administration that supported Black students by encouraging better study habits and offering mentorship.

He often used his national standing to bring attention to issues affecting students. Like in 1999, when he led marches through the streets of Decatur, Ill. in defense of seven Black teens expelled from school for two years for a fight, shining a light on the unequal effects of harsh discipline policies.

Jackson marched and picketed with the Chicago Teachers Union, joining their struggle for better working conditions for teachers and more resources for schools.

More recently he used his voice to address a range of higher education issues in Chicago, including speaking out in support of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus.

Stephanie Gadlin, a former communications director for Jackson and the CTU, said his poor upbringing in segregated South Carolina motivated his work.

He wasn’t afforded many opportunities and was told he was a “nobody,” she said. That’s why when Jackson visited classrooms he made sure kids knew they were “somebody.”

“It wasn’t just fighting for public policy,” Gadlin said, “it was also lifting up young minds and ensuring that they knew they could achieve under any kind of circumstances.”

Fighting ‘Willis Wagons’ and pushing school integration

When Jackson arrived in Chicago in 1964 with his wife and young family, he joined a fight already underway for better conditions in Chicago schools and communities.

Shortly before he arrived, for example, more than 200,000 students participated in a school boycott to protest the mobile classrooms that Chicago Public Schools put in the parking lots of majority Black schools on the South and West sides to relieve overcrowding.

Jackson helped to organize more demonstrations against the trailers, which were pejoratively named “Willis Wagons” after then-Supt. Benjamin Willis, who erected mobile classrooms instead of sending Black students to nearby schools in predominantly white areas that had space. When Jackson helped start the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization in 1965, the group kept up the pressure.

That work reached new levels when in 1977, under pressure from federal courts and state officials, Chicago began a voluntary desegregation program to address that overcrowding. The city came up with a plan to bus students from predominantly Latino and Black schools to under-enrolled white ones.

The move sparked backlash from white families who were against desegregation. In Ashburn on the Southwest Side, parents protested and refused to send their children to integrated schools.

Jackson met with state officials, including Gov. James Thompson, to ensure the safety of students during the transition, according to reporting at the time in the Chicago Daily News.

On the first day of school in 1977, Jackson urged discipline and peace. Then he embraced seven Black children headed to a bus stop to travel to their new school.

Some buses were met with jeers and lines of angry adults. Jackson escorted Black students into an Ashburn elementary school, where someone had spray painted “Resist Busing” on the sidewalk. A white protester spat on Jackson and shouted obscenities at him before getting arrested, according to the Chicago Daily News.

Jackson’s programs supported Black students, but some critiqued his approach

In 1975 Jackson founded PUSH Excel, the educational arm of his Rainbow PUSH organization, to support Black students in school and help them find jobs.

He urged personal accountability, advising students to lead a disciplined life. At the time, the New York Times reported, he said Black schools were “chaotic” with rampant drug use and out-of-control students. Jackson also challenged parents to be more involved in their children’s lives.

Some critics felt Jackson placed too much blame on the victims of racism. They also took issue with Jackson calling out Black parents for not supervising their children more closely, countering that they often lacked the financial advantages that allowed white, middle-class parents to spend more time at home.

But the program impressed President Carter. Under his administration, Push Excel received millions in grants and contracts. At its height the program had dozens of chapters across the country.

Over the years PUSH Excel has earned praise for increasing college access for Black and Brown students. PUSH Excel has awarded millions in scholarships to students who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford tuition. It also helps students visit historically Black colleges and universities, and in recent years has offered summer camps focused on teaching students to code and resolve conflicts.

Jackson brought national attention to the expulsion of Black students

In 1999, Jackson jumped in the fray when seven Black teens in Decatur were expelled for two years after a brawl at a football game.

His involvement brought a national focus on the teens’ plight and the debate over “zero tolerance” policies at schools, which imposed severe consequences for specific offenses, regardless of context.

Jackson argued that the teens understood what they did was wrong and needed correction, but keeping them from school for so long would only harm their education. He also said such policies disproportionately punish Black students.

Jackson led protests and vigils for the students. One march through Decatur drew thousands. He also faced detractors: Members of the Ku Klux Klan hounded the group and held their own gatherings while Jackson was there.

Gadlin, who was with Jackson in Decatur, remembers feeling afraid the white supremacist group would respond with violence to their protests.

Gadlin recalls Jackson’s measured response was: “You cannot show fear, you never show fear, God is on our side.”

He also met with school officials. As a result of those efforts, the students got just one year of expulsion, with the chance to enroll in alternative schools.

But Jackson wanted them reinstated earlier if they achieved academically. When school officials wouldn’t budge, Jackson led a demonstration outside one of the schools. Jackson was arrested after trying to lead a group into the building.

The ordeal caught the attention of Gov. George Ryan, who after speaking with Jackson expressed support for his efforts to reform zero-tolerance policies and limit school expulsions, according to the Sun-Times.

Jackson was ahead of his time. Chicago moved away from zero-tolerance policies, and in 2015 the state legislature passed a law putting strict limits on suspensions and expulsions at Illinois schools.

Jackson lifted up fight to reopen Dyett High School

One of Jackson’s most prominent stances came in 2015 when he joined community members in their fight to save Dyett High School from closure, including participating in a hunger strike that saved the South Side school.

Before that, parents and activists had spent years protesting the district’s plan to phase out the school, citing its low enrollment and poor academic performance.

Chicago School Board member Jitu Brown, one of the community organizers at the time, said Jackson was instrumental in getting the hunger strike off the ground.

The group approached several churches near Dyett about using their space as a base camp, but they all refused, Brown said. Jackson opened up the nearby Rainbow PUSH headquarters to them, where the group slept and showered.

For 34 days, the strikers abstained from solid food and held protests at City Hall, asking then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel to invest in much-needed neighborhood schools. Some of the protestors were hospitalized.

Jackson, who was 73 at the time, fasted for three days in solidarity, Brown said.

“By Rev. Jackson putting his weight behind the hunger strike, it let the powers that be know that we had some heavyweight support,” Brown said.

The strike eventually put pressure on CPS to reopen the building in 2016 as Dyett High School for the Arts. The district spent $14 million in renovations, and the building now includes a dance studio, a textile design space and a black-box theater.

Chicago Teachers Union leaders cite Jackson’s influence

Jackson frequently threw his support behind causes championed by the CTU over the years.

When teachers went on strike over a new contract in 2012, Jackson showed up at the Hilton Chicago, where the union and the school board were negotiating, and volunteered as a possible mediator.

He cited his experiences freeing hostages from foreign prisons and hastening the end of the 1980 Chicago firefighters strike. Jackson said he met with both parties at the hotel, shuttling across the hallway that separated them.

“As I said to both sides, if it means meeting all night long, let’s meet all night long,” Jackson said at the time, according to the Sun-Times.

In 2013 Jackson marched through the Loop alongside former CTU President Karen Lewis to protest the mass closures of 50 schools.

Gadlin said that during Lewis’ tenure she’d meet with Jackson at Rainbow PUSH to strategize and talk about issues affecting schools. Their conversations would sometimes last hours.

Jackson encouraged the union to teach its members nonviolent measures to advance their causes, such as sit-ins.

“He was a great catalyst during the Karen Lewis years,” Gadlin said.

Current CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said Jackson’s leadership was a reminder that “public education is inseparable from the fight for racial and economic justice.”

His words continue to inspire her.

“He told me that an unapologetic and bold Black woman could lead this union and help organize the transformation of our city to a more equitable and just Chicago,” Davis Gates said in a statement. “I carry these words with me every single day.”

More recently, Jackson lent his voice to issues on college campuses

In the years leading up to his death, Jackson spoke out about a range of higher education issues in Chicago.

In May 2024, he wrote an op-ed in The Chicago Maroon, the University of Chicago’s student newspaper, addressed to students protesting “to stop the horror in Gaza.”

Jackson praised the protesters for risking school expulsion and criminal prosecution to demonstrate. On the day it ran, pro-Palestinian demonstrators were in their fifth day of staging an encampment in the university’s quad, and the university officials were urging the demonstrators to disband.

“The demonstrations are not perfect, but they represent these students’ zeal and passion for their cause,” Jackson wrote, noting the student protesters gave him “hope in our nation’s future.”

In 2016, when public universities went months without state funding during a historic budget impasse, Jackson called attention to the dire situation at Chicago State University, the state’s only predominantly Black university. Chicago State relies heavily on state aid, and the funding delay pushed the university to lay off hundreds of staff and end the school year early.

Jackson protested alongside Chicago State students and gave the keynote speech at the university’s commencement that year — support that students remembered a decade later.

In 2021, at the age of 80 and still wearing a bandage from a recent fall, Jackson rallied alongside Black law students from the University of Illinois Chicago who alleged that a professor called them racial slurs. The professor denied those claims, but students said Jackson’s presence helped to elevate their voices.

“He’s made so many changes so that we can have these liberties to actually be able to go to law school,” UIC law student Erica Fatima told the Sun-Times at the time. “To have him come and stand with us, it’s just incredible. It really is everything.”