Blacks in the 80’s

Ronald Ervin McNair, was born on October 21, 1950, in Lake City, South Carolina to Carl and Pearl McNair. He attended North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, where, in 1971, he graduated magna cum laude with a BS degree in physics. In 1976 he earned his Ph.D. degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. McNair's many distinctions include: Presidential Scholar (1967-71), Ford Foundation Fellow (1971-74), and National Fellowship Fund Fellow (1974-75). He was also named Omega Psi Phi Scholar of theYear (1975), was honored as the Distinguished National Scientist by the National Society of Black Professional Engineers (1979), and received the Friend Of Freedom Award (1981).

Ronald E. McNair was nationally recognized for his work in the field of laser physics. In 1978, he was one of 35 applicants selected from a pool of ten thousand for NASA's space shuttle program and assigned as a mission specialist aboard the 1984 flight of the shuttle Challenger. On his first space shuttle mission in February 1984, McNair orbited the earth 122 times aboard Challenger. He was the second African American to fly in space.

In addition to his academic achievements, he received three honorary doctorates and numerous fellowships and commendations. He was also a sixth degree black belt in karate and an accomplished jazz saxophonist. He was married to Cheryl Moore and had two children, Reginald Ervin and Joy Cheray.

On the morning of January 28, 1986, McNair and his six crew members died in an explosion aboard the space shuttle Challenger.

in full JESSE LOUIS JACKSON (b. Oct. 8, 1941, Greenville, S.C., U.S.), American civil-rights leader, Baptist minister, and politician, the first black man to make a serious bid for the U.S. presidency (in the Democratic Party's nomination races in 1983-84 and 1987-88).

Born into a poor family, Jackson attended the University of Illinois (1959-60) on a scholarship and then transferred to the predominantly black Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina (Greensboro), receiving a B.A. in sociology (1964). He moved to Chicago in 1966, did postgraduate work at the Chicago Theological Seminary, and was ordained a Baptist minister in 1968.

While an undergraduate, Jackson became involved in the black Civil Rights Movement. In 1965 he went to Selma, Alabama, to march with Martin Luther King, Jr., and became a worker in King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In 1966 he helped found the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket, the economic arm of the SCLC, and served as the organization's national director from 1967 to 1971. In 1971 he founded Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), a Chicago-based organization in which he advocated black self-help and achieved a broad audience for his liberal views. He gained international attention by traveling widely and trying to mediate or spotlight a number of international problems and disputes.

Jackson became a leading spokesman and advocate for black Americans in the 1980s. His voter-registration drive was a key factor in the election of Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington, in April 1983. In 1989 Jackson took residency in Washington, D.C., and in 1990, when the Washington City Council created two unpaid offices of "statehood senator"--popularly called "shadow senator"--to lobby the U.S. Congress for statehood for the District of Columbia, Jackson won election