How the Rev. Jesse Jackson helped popularize the term ‘African American’

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who died Tuesday at age 84, helped push for widespread usage of the term “African American” as a way to reclaim cultural identity.

The protege of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. joined calls by NAACP members and other movement leaders in the late 1980s to replace “colored” and “blacks” with a term they thought better represented the community’s ancestral roots and brought a sense of dignity.

“To be called African Americans has cultural integrity — it puts us in our proper historical context,” Jackson said at the time. “Every ethnic group in this country has a reference to some base, some historical, cultural base.”

Jackson, a two-time presidential candidate who led the Civil Rights Movement for decades after King’s assassination, had a rare neurological disorder and died at home in Chicago surrounded by family, his daughter Santita Jackson confirmed Tuesday.

Over his lifetime, Jackson advocated for poor and underrepresented people getting voting rights, jobs and educational opportunities, and he amplified calls for Black pride. He thou...