Yusef Jackson Assumes Command of Rainbow PUSH, But Will He Eclipse His Dad’s Accomplishments?

News Analysis

By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New Journal and Guide

By now, you probably know that Jesse Jackson’s son recently announced plans to take the helm at Rainbow Push about two months after many prominent Democrats eulogized his father in February.

But do you know the younger Jackson will have to steer the 55-year-old civil rights organization past roadblocks that his father encountered when he started Operation Push at the time when Richard Nixon was president? Later, the elder Jackson launched many successful economic boycotts in the 1980s, during the Reagan era.

What if the GOP is simply using an old, beat-up, and tattered playbook that has some people needlessly scratching their head in confusion?

On April 9, Yusef Jackson announced he would run Rainbow Push with his brother, Jesse Jackson Jr. But, are they assuming command at a time when it looks like history is repeating itself? (The elder Jackson launched Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) and the National Rainbow Coalition in 1971).

The elder Jackson, who was eulogized Feb. 25 to March 7, 2026, across multiple cities including Chicago, South Carolina, and Washington, D.C., rolled up his sleeves and launched the Chicago-headquartered nonprofit during Nixon’s first year in office.

He began to launch economic boycotts after Ronald Reagan began his first term in 1980.

GOP-launched parallels surface in news reports. Reagan, for example, advocated for radical tax-cutting programs that imposed major federal cutbacks in domestic spending. He endorsed large hikes in the military budget. On the stump, Reagan’s 1980 campaign speeches advocated reviving the nation’s free enterprise tradition, emphasizing how it had fueled prosperity before the Great Depression. He argued that the United States could regain its economic vitality by reducing government intervention and restoring confidence in the private sector. (Sound familiar)?

Meanwhile, the 1981 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act mandated budget cuts in the subsidized school-lunch program during the Reagan era.

It is impossible to overlook the similarities. The elder Jackson launched Rainbow Push at a time when federal cuts caused school lunch costs for low-income students to triple to 75 cents after Regan assumed office–a situation that his son is facing today, in other words.

Inflation is rampant. DEI programs are illegal. Gas prices are high. Gerrymandering efforts are widespread. Congress is locked in turmoil, while federal cutbacks have substantially reduced free food, subsidy-sustained, and other low-cost food programs.

“Kids could be twitching in their seats because there’s nothing in their bellies,” Al Wood, director of the Los Angeles school food service program, told UPI, in an interview published Dec. 19, 1981.

During the Reagan era, 11 percent of American school children dropped out because lunch costs rose between 10 and 25 cents a day.

Janice M. Oliver, vice president of the Kennedy School Parent Teacher Association, said in The Harvard Crimson published Feb. 9, 1982. “Seventy cents is a lot of money for a family to pay for each lunch, especially if there is more than one child in a family.”

Here is another parallel. Last year, Congress passed the 2025 budget reconciliation bill which threatens school meal access for students across the country. The Senate passed the measure with a 51-50 vote, with Vice President JD Vance acting as tie-breaker. The House passed the Senate version by a vote of 218-214, sending the legislation to President Trump’s desk for his signature.

In the new Trump-era, fewer children are automatically eligible for free school meals, while families are also losing SNAP and Medicaid benefits

Other parallels include the Reagan administration proposing sharp slashes in federal aid to education. The Regan administration sought and implemented budget reductions and new approaches for channeling federal funds to states, communities, students and institutions of higher education.

Yusef Jackson said his father spent his last months urging him to mobilize churches to feed those who lost food assistance during a historic government shutdown, according to the Chicago Sun Times.

“I intend to die with my shoes on,” he recalled his father saying.

Yusef Jackson ended his announcement by recalling his father’s famous words: “Keep hope alive.”

The point is the younger Jackson is assuming the top role at Rainbow Push, in the post-DEI era– amid ongoing GOP efforts to reduce voting rights, and at a time when federal cutbacks caused nearly 300,000 Black women to lose their jobs. In 2025, the Black female employment rate fell by 1.4 percentage points to 55.7 percent.

“Rainbow PUSH is also suffering from a bit of an identity crisis and has slipped in stature,” Journalist Roland Martin said in 2024. “Chicago is no longer the epicenter of the Black community,” Martin added. “Now, the population has shifted to the Atlanta area.”

To eclipse his father’s trailblazing accomplishments, the younger Jackson will have to confront modern-day realities that his father also faced in the 1970s and the 1980s.

The elder Jackson unsuccessfully ran twice for the presidency in 1984 and 1988.

Will his son build new bridges?

When the elder Jackson said he was stepping down in 2023 as president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, news reports showed Vice President Kamala Harris sitting beside him holding his hand. Jackson introduced his successor, a popular Dallas minister named Frederick Douglass Haynes III.

Haynes heads Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, a justice-focused church with more than 13,000 members. The church’s resume shows it has fought economic predators in Texas, launched the THR!VE Intern and Leadership Program which employs nearly 100 young Black males between the ages of 16-19, and has already donated $1 million to HBCUs. In 2016, Haynes was inducted into the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame.

But Haynes quit. He left after less than three months without offering an explanation.

On March 4, 2026, Haynes won the Democratic nomination for Texas’ 30th Congressional District — a seat currently occupied by Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, whose term officially ends on Jan. 3, 2027.