Reverend Jesse Jackson

A lifelong civil rights campaigner, who worked for Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s, Reverend Jackson founded Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity) in 1971, and the National Rainbow Coalition in 1984.  The two operations merged in 1996 becoming the Rainbow PUSH Coalition (RPC), which today is an international human and civil rights organisation, working to empower people through grassroots advocacy.

Born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1941, he was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1968.  He stood as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency in 1984 and 1988 and gave speeches which cemented his reputation as a powerful and passionate orator.

Jesse Jackson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton in 2000, and this year the French President Emmanual Macron awarded him the Legion D'Honneur.