Home / Full timeline / The Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Black American candidate for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination, wins precinct caucuses in the state of South Carolina.
The Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Black American candidate for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination, wins precinct caucuses in the state of South Carolina.
1988 (Mar 12)
The Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Black American candidate for the Democratic party's presidential nomination, won precinct caucuses in the state of South Carolina. In the caucus election, Jackson acquired approximately 55 percent of the delegates; 20 percent were uncommitted, 17 percent went to Tennessee senator Albert Gore, 6 percent to Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, and two other candidates shared the remaining 2 percent. Kevin Gray, Jackson's campaign manager in South Carolina, estimated that his candidate would eventually be awarded about 25 of the 44 national convention delegates at stake in the South Carolina balloting. Although Jackson was a resident of Chicago, Illinois, he was a native of Greenville, South Carolina, had "the status of a favorite son" as well as the almost solid support of the South's second largest Black population, and had a campaign organization that worked hard with the state's 4,000 Black churches to turn out the vote. Before the South Carolina caucuses, according to figures from the Associated Press, Jackson trailed Governor Dukakis in the delegate count 459.5 to 400.5.
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.