Joseph Harrison Jackson (January 11, 1900[1] – August 18, 1990) was an American pastor and the longest serving President of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was highly controversial in many black churches, where the minister preached spiritual salvation rather than political activism.
The National Baptist Convention became deeply split; Jackson had supported the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956, but by 1960 he told his denomination they should not become involved in civil rights activism.
The PNBC became the "household of the civil rights movement among Black Baptists," and the frontline supporters of the extensive activism of the King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Jackson grew up on a farm near Rudyard, Mississippi, where he taught himself spelling, reading, and arithmetic while working in the pasture and completing chores.
[1] In 1941, Jackson was called to pastor the historic Olivet Baptist Church on Chicago's South Side, where he served until his death in 1990.
Under Jackson's leadership, one of the NBC's achievements included the purchase of a Freedom Farm in Tennessee to provide a haven for Black farmers.
A group led by Gardner C. Taylor including Martin Luther King Sr. and Jr.; Ralph David Abernathy Sr., Benjamin Mays, and L. Venchael Booth (a Cincinnati, Ohio pastor) filed suit against Jackson,[when?]
A. G. Wright of Detroit fell four feet from the stage to the auditorium floor, resulting in a concussion that caused him to lose his life days later.
"[9] During his September 10, 1964, speech delivered at the 84th Annual Session of the NBC in Detroit, Michigan, Jackson explained his views on civil rights and society.
Jackson followed this by stating, "The presence of one bound man pollutes the whole stream of human society; and the rattle of one chain of oppression creates a discord that breaks the harmony in every democratic system, and disturbs the mind and poisons the heart of every man with fear and dread, so that the would-be master finds himself mentally and morally the dweller in the hovels of slaves, the servant of a cause that is hostile to democracy, and becomes himself, the victim of the baser emotions of his own nature.
Jackson believed that as long as America was guided by logic and law this home of the Federal Constitution and land of due process would allow for fair treatment of all.
Jackson believed that a great church could not be built preaching hate, envy, revenge, and sending the people out on the street after the service mad at the world.