Race, Capitalism, and Power: The Economic Thought of the Young Jesse Jackson

Fifty years ago, Jesse Jackson joined the S.C.L.C. and rose rapidly to become one of this country’s major advocates of black capitalism. Far less well known is his interest in finance and credit for African Americans that suggests his prescience about the decline of industrial capitalism. Focusing on Jackson’s early civil rights activity in Chicago, this paper charts the initial stages through which Martin Luther King’s young pupil rapidly became a staunch supporter of black economic power, strongly committed to a wealth-transfer agenda, while most of the other civil rights and labor leaders showed more interest in a just distribution of income. Abandoning the stereotypical image of Jackson in his early years, an image limiting him to an ambitious activist interested in bargains and with little inclination for analysis of the economic reality of his times, this paper addresses Jackson’s forward way of thinking. His growing expertise in money and finance made him one of the few civil rights leaders who genuinely grasped the functioning of the post-industrial economy and constituted the true wellspring of his later pan-Africanism and economic policies.