Pinback Button, "Jackson For President"

A color photo of Rev. Jesse L. Jackson looks out from the White House on this button supporting his historic run for president in 1983-1984. Jackson broke ground first trod by Shirley Chisolm, becoming the second African American to run nationally for a major party’s nomination in a presidential primary. The stripes along the pinback button’s edges are red, yellow, brown, and white to symbolize Jackson’s multiracial coalition building. Jackson campaigned nationally for the Democratic nomination again in the 1988 presidential contest. The button belonged to journalist Ethel L. Payne (1911-1991), a Chicago native who moved to the nation’s capital in 1952 to cover national and international news for the preeminent African American newspaper, The Chicago Defender. A lifelong civil rights activist, Payne reported from thirty countries over the course of her own pioneering career, becoming known as the First Lady of the Black Press.