The Rev. Jesse Jackson announced Jackson's death to a stunned Chicago audience.

Maynard Holbrook Jackson Jr., a great-grandson of Cobb County slaves, was born
into Atlanta's black aristocracy, graduated from Morehouse College at 18 years old
and was elected in 1973 the first black mayor of a major Southern city.

He was elected after his opponent had used the divisive campaign slogan, "Atlanta's
Too Young To Die." Jackson was only 35 at the time, the nation's youngest mayor.

His election came five years after Cleveland's Carl Stokes and Richard Hatcher of
Gary, Ind., had broken the color line for mayors. The same fall Jackson was elected in Atlanta, Los Angeles' Tom Bradley and Detroit's Coleman Young also broke through
in their cities.

Jackson was an eloquent orator, with iridescent green eyes and a bearish heft that once reached 350 pounds. His political career spanned a quarter of a century. Among
Atlanta mayors, only William Hartsfield, who served 23 years, had a tenure at City Hall that exceeded Jackson's dozen years.

Jackson's political star first ascended in 1968 when he challenged Herman Talmadge
for his U.S. Senate seat. Jackson lost that race by more than a 3-to-1 margin, but won
the city of Atlanta by 6,000 votes, a political omen for him.

Though not actively involved in the civil rights movement as a young man, Jackson was among a cadre of political leaders across the nation who worked during the 1970s to expand the social gains made by minorities into the economic arena.

He served the two-term limit at Atlanta City Hall from 1974 to 1982. In a city that
once had served as the arsenal of the Confederacy, his historic 1973 election generated exaggerated hopes in Atlanta's black community and exaggerated fears in the white community.

Through sheer resolve, Jackson endured a turbulent first few years in office, sparring
with the city's white business power structure. Meanwhile, his poise and oratorical skill stirred many young and ambitious blacks across the country, and soon their resumes stacked up at City Hall.

Of historic import, Jackson instituted a controversial affirmative action program that elevated the percentage of city contracts awarded to minorities in Atlanta from less
than 1 percent in 1973 to 38.6 percent five years later. He applied his program of
"joint venture," which brought together white and minority-owned firms, most promiently
at the Atlanta airport.

Years later, Jackson would crow, "We built the Atlanta airport, biggest terminal
building complex in the world, ahead of schedule and within budget -- and
simultaneously rewrote the books on affirmative action." He also would boast that,
under his watch, joint venture produced about 25 new black millionaires, most as a
result of the airport.

In 1989, following Andrew Young's two terms as Atlanta's mayor, Jackson, then a
bond attorney for the Chicago based firm of Chapman & Cutler, re-emerged as a local political force.

He swamped City Councilman Hosea Williams, winning the mayoralty with a mandate
of 79 percent of the vote.

During his final term from 1990 to 1994, Jackson became a prominent spokesman for American cities, serving as president of the National Conference of Democratic Mayors and of the national Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials.

At the 1992 Summer Olympics in Spain, meanwhile, he had the honor of accepting the five-ringed flag from Barcelona Mayor Pasqual Maragall. Jackson waved the flag
broadly that day inside the Olympic stadium and later quipped, "I've got enough ham in
me to appreciate standing in front of three billion people."

But Jackson's third and final term proved frustrating as he was unable to reproduce the accomplishments of his initial terms. A corruption scandal at the Atlanta airport, which
led to the conviction of his old friend, airport commissioner Ira Jackson, marred his administration.

On June 9, 1993, Jackson announced he would not seek a fourth term, citing health and other personal reasons. His announcement surprised many Atlantans.

Only days before, a local survey by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution had revealed that Jackson's public approval rating was a powerful 70 percent. Roughly half of whites and three-fouths of blacks polled said they approved of the way Jackson served as mayor.

Nine months earlier, in September 1992, Jackson had undergone bypass surgery at St. Joseph's Hospital to clear six blockages in his arteries. At the time, his physician said the mayor was about 100 pounds overweight, adding, "He's obese and he has to lose
weight."

In announcing his decision to bow out of the 1993 mayor's race, Jackson said, "I have wrestled with this decision more than any other decision in my life . . . But I am satisfied that I have made a, regrettably, necessary decision."

Later, he would reflect, "I got tired of giving up $500,000 a year to earn $100,000 a
year [as mayor] and getting beat up and sacrificing my family, myself, my income, my health and everything."

Though proud of his achievement as the big-city South's first African-American mayor, Jackson, in later years, wondered about his own legacy and bemoaned, "I can see that
my full name will be Maynard Jackson First Black Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia."

That rankled him. He thought it racist and unfair because it cheated him of his accomplishments in office, which included not only affirmative action programs, but overseeing construction of the midfield terminal at Hartsfield Atlanta International
Airport (and providing many jobs in the process), giving voice to intown neighborhoods, establishing a cultural affairs department and serving as the first modern manager under
the city's new charter.

After leaving public life, Jackson entered the financial field, where he began his own investment company. In 1996, his firm, Jackson Securities Inc., was named one of the
top five black investment companies by Black Enterprise magazine.

In 2001 Jackson made an unsuccessful bid to become president of the Democratic National Committee. After his defeat he headed a national initiative for the DNC to recognize and encourage African-American voter participation.

Pedigree foreshadowed political career

Born March 23, 1938 in Dallas, Texas, Maynard Holbrook Jackson, Jr. was
descended from a long line of black men and women who, because of segregation, had been unable to shape their own destiny.

As a matter of fate, his own coming of age would coincide with the slow rupture of legal segregation in the South and present him with opportunities previous generations had
never known.

His pedigree was clear: his mother, Irene Dobbs Jackson, of an elite Atlanta family, was the Spelman College valedictorian of 1929. She later earned a doctorate in French from the University of Toulouse in southern France.

His father, the Rev. Maynard Jackson Sr., hailed from the Negro-Creole society of
New Orleans. He was a Morehouse College graduate and the son of a powerful Baptist minister in Dallas; the Rev. Jackson later inherited his father's pulpit at the New Hope Baptist Church and founded a voter registration league for blacks.

In 1944, the Rev. Jackson Sr., foreshadowing his son's political future, became the first black to run for a seat on Dallas's school board (he lost by a wide margin). The
following spring he moved his family to Atlanta where he became pastor of Friendship Baptist Church.

The third of six children, Jackson Jr. worshipped his father. "He was my hero," the son would say. When the elder Jackson, suffering from a mental illness, died in a state institution in Texas in 1953, his son would say it was "the biggest blow of my life." After
his death, Jackson Jr. added, "I kind of went around expecting to see him walking
around the corner one day."

John Wesley Dobbs, Jackson's maternal grandfather, stepped into the void. A former railway mail clerk who developed into a powerful civic leader in his own right, Dobbs served as Grand Master of the Prince Hall Negro Masons of Georgia. His family was
his private crusade: all six of Dobbs' daughters graduated from Spelman College and
later earned master's degrees. His fifth daughter, Mattiwilda, became an internationally famous opera star.

Dobbs also coined the nickname "Sweet Auburn" Avenue, after the timeless Oliver Goldsmith poem, and his pride in dramatic oratory was passed on to his grandson.

So impressed was Dobbs with his grandson's unique speaking skills, he told friends and family, "The way that boy talks he's booorn to be a lawyer!"

A child prodigy, Jackson entered Morehouse College at 14, as a Ford Foundation
Early Admission Scholar. He graduated from the school in 1956 with a bachelor's
degree in Political Science and History; he also sang with the glee club.

That fall he went north to Boston University Law School. At least three years younger
than his law school peers, Jackson struggled with the curriculum. In two different
attempts, he was unable to make passing marks in Boston and dropped out. For a time,
in 1957, he worked in Cleveland as a claims examiner for the state of Ohio's Bureau of Unemployment Compensation. Later he sold encyclopedias for P.F. Collier & Son; he made more than $20,000 one year, a heady amount.

His heart, however, remained in law. In the fall of 1961, he tried one more time,
entering the North Carolina Central University Law School in Durham where his mother served as head of the school's foreign languages department. There, his career would begin to take sharp focus. Jackson graduated cum laude in 1964 and excelled on the school's moot court debate team. He also met Burnella "Bunnie" Hayes Burke, divorced with a young daughter. They married in Atlanta in December 1965 and would have two children, daughter Brooke and son Maynard III, known as "Buzzy."

In Atlanta, Jackson became an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board and
later joined the staff of the Emory Community Legal Services Center where low-income Atlantans could obtain free legal services.

In April 1968 he marched in the funeral cortege behind the casket of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a close friend of the Dobbs family. Sitting home and watching television
in the early morning hours of June 5, 1968, he saw Robert Kennedy killed by an
assassin.

Stirred by the murders of King and Kennedy, Jackson threw his hat into the 1968 race against U.S. Sen. Herman Talmadge, one of Georgia's legendary political figures.
Jackson had to borrow $3,000 to pay the qualifying fee. He entered the race without
first consulting with Atlanta's established black leadership, stirring anger and some jealousy.

His populist campaign hammered Talmadge on urban issues, anti-poverty programs and federal aid to education. Jackson proposed to create a Small Farmers Aministrtion to provide interest-free loans and help with farm surplus programs.

One of Jackson's ads read: "Maynard Jackson doesn't intend to be a 'Negro Senator.'
He is dedicated to representing all the people of Georgia."

Despite losing, he achieved a name recognition. In 1969, he used that recognition to
defeat Alderman Milton Farris to become Atlanta's first black vice mayor, largely a ceremonial position.

That Atlanta suddenly had a Jewish mayor (Sam Massell) and a black vice mayor provided not only fodder for jokes about "kosher chitlins," but also evidence that the South's biggest and fastest-growing city might also be its most enlightened.

The Massell-Jackson relationship quickly soured. Both looked to their inevitable showdown of 1973.

Bitter campaign for mayor

By 1973, the acceleration of white flight, and the continued influx of black residents, elevated Atlanta's black population to nearly 50 percent. Some black leaders thought it wise to wait until 1977 to launch a viable black mayoral candidate.

Ever impatient, Jackson did not wait. In the primary, he won nearly 47 percent of the
vote, including better than 80 percent of black ballots. The incumbent Massell barely edged former Congressman Charles Weltner for second place, 19.8 percent to 19.1. Leroy Johnson, a black former state legislator, finished fourth with 4 percent. Though Jackson had finished just 3,500 votes short of a majority, he was headed for a runoff
with Massell.

That 1973 runoff stands as perhaps the most vitriolic mayoral campaign in modern
Atlanta. Trying to reverse a 27-point deficit, and perhaps the monumental tide of racial history, Massell changed his slogan from "Win It Again, Sam!" to "Atlanta's Too Young
to Die." Years later, Massell still insisted, "I absolutely, positively did not see any racial overtones in this. It was just the furthest thing from my mind."

But the slogan proved racially divisive and backfired against Massell. On Oct. 16,
1973, Jackson won nearly 60 percent of the vote in the runoff, including 95 percent of
the black vote and 21 percent of the white.

Breaking into unchartered political waters, Jackson became Atlanta's first black mayor.

His inauguration at the Civic Center on Jan. 7, 1974, was a liberation night for black Atlantans, a moment that one black city official said felt every bit as meaningful as "the Supreme Court saying, 'You don't have to sit in the back of the bus anymore."'

Jackson was a poised and articulate spokesman for the New South. He wanted his inaugural to begin a process of interracial understanding in Atlanta.

"We stand not so much as a gateway to the South, but as a gateway to a new time, a
new era, a new beginning for the cities of our land," Jackson said in his inaugural
address.

"In spite of much propaganda to the contrary, we have not yet seen the birth of a really New South. Now we stand with a choice: we can live as if this were simply the worst
of times, as if there were no path for Atlanta save the terrible mistakes of the urban
North. Or we can strike out in still uncharted directions."

By ERNIE SUGGS
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Setting People and Organizations Up for Success"™