Rev. Jesse Jackson’s role in popularizing the term “African American” reflected a broader push in the Black civil rights movement for language that participants said carried dignity and cultural meaning, the Associated Press reported after Jackson’s death Tuesday at age 84.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a longtime civil-rights leader and protégé of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., helped drive momentum for the term’s widespread usage as a way to reclaim cultural identity, according to the AP. In the late 1980s, Jackson joined calls by members of the NAACP and other movement leaders to change what they viewed as outdated labels such as “colored” and “blacks” in favor of wording they believed better represented the community’s ancestral roots.
At the time, Jackson framed the change as more than a style preference. “To be called African Americans has cultural integrity — it puts us in our proper historical context,” Jackson said, adding, “Every ethnic group in this country has a reference to some base, some historical, cultural base.”
AP reported that Jackson’s death came at home in Chicago, surrounded by family, and that his daughter, Santita Jackson, confirmed the details of his passing. Over his lifetime, Jackson advocated for voting rights, jobs, and educational opportunities for poor and underrepresented people, and he amplified calls for Black pride, the AP said.
The AP noted that “African American” had been used by some scholars before the late-1980s push, but it did not enter common use widely until movement leaders helped promote it. It cited research by Yale law librarian Fred R. Shapiro that the term appeared as early as 1782 on a title page to a Philadelphia sermon pamphlet described as “By an African American.”
Jackson, the AP said, also took cues from other minority movements that were pressing to change how groups were labeled and recognized. The article pointed to debates in the 1990s over “Latino” and “Hispanic,” and to the Asian American community’s successful lobbying of the U.S. Census Bureau, which led to Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders being listed for the first time in the 1990 census, while also noting that the Census Bureau guidance that year included that “Black or Negro includes African-Americans.”
The AP described the terminology campaign as quickly gaining traction through organizational action. It said a month after Jackson convened a meeting of 75 Black groups—fraternities, sororities, advocacy organizations and social groups—organizers said there was “overwhelming consensus” in favor of replacing older terms. Some school districts in Chicago and Atlanta adopted “African American” and incorporated it into curriculum, according to the AP.
As “African American” spread, the AP said the terms “Black” and “African American” are now often used interchangeably in the U.S., though “Black” is frequently viewed as more inclusive because it can encompass people from Latin America and the Caribbean. Those who dislike the term “African American” argue it puts a modifier on American identity or implies a personal link to Africa that does not necessarily match people’s lived experience.
The AP also referenced comments from sociologist Walter Allen, who was quoted in a January 1989 New York Times article describing the adoption of the term as “a significant psychological and cultural turning point.”