He attended the racially segregated Sterling High School in Greenville, where he was elected student class president, finished tenth in his class, and earned letters in baseball, football, and basketball. Living under Jim Crow segregation laws, Jackson was taught to go to the back of the bus and use separate water fountains-practices he accepted until the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955. Īs a young child, Jackson was taunted by other children about his out-of-wedlock birth and has said these experiences helped motivate him to succeed.
He considered both men to be his fathers. Jesse was given his stepfather's name in the adoption, but as he grew up he also maintained a close relationship with Robinson. One year after Jesse's birth, his mother married Charles Henry Jackson, a post office maintenance worker who later adopted the boy. Robinson was a former professional boxer who was an employee of a textile brokerage and a well-known figure in the black community. His ancestry includes Cherokee, enslaved African-Americans, Irish planters, and a Confederate sheriff. Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina, to Helen Burns (1924–2015), a 16-year-old high school student, and her 33-year-old married neighbor, Noah Louis Robinson (1908–1997).
