dent during the early years of the Civil Rights Movement, and after graduation from high school in 1959, Jackson was recruited for a professional baseball team. Jackson competed with a white catcher from his home town, Dickie Dietz, and both were offered contracts from the team. However, although Jackson had struck Dietz out three times in the preliminary competition, Jackson was offered $6,000 to Dietz's $95,000. Instead of signing, Jackson chose to attend the University of Illinois on a football scholarship, but was disillusioned to find that his hopes of becoming a first string quarterback were dashed because Illinois reserved that honor for whites only. Consequently, Jackson transferred back to a historically black college in North Carolina, North Carolina A & T, where he continued his involvement in civil rights.2
By 1963, Jackson had received a call to the ministry, and moved to attend Chicago Theological Seminary. He was not to forsake politics, however, and struggled to find an appropriate way to combine both his political and religious interest and convictions. In his words, "My religion obligated me to be political, that is, to seek to do God's will and allow the spiritual Word to become concrete justice and dwell among us."3
In the spring of 1965, Jackson organized a group of seminary students to make the trip from Chicago to Selma to help support Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). During this time, Jackson became known to both King and Reverend Ralph Abernathy, King's lieutenant in the SCLC. In fact, following his involvement in the Selma campaign, Jackson returned to Chicago to become involved in the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO), which was a broad coalition of more than fifty religious, neighborhood, professional, and civic groups working for racial justice in Chicago, particularly within the rather corrupt school system.4
In the mid 1...