Jacqueline Jackson
American author and peace activist

Jacqueline Lavinia Jackson (née Davis, later Brown; born March 7, 1944) is an American author and peace activist. She wrote Loving You, Thinking of You, Don't Forget to Pray, a compilation of letters she had sent to her son Jesse Jackson Jr. while he was incarcerated. Married to Jesse Jackson from 1962 until his death in 2026, she has been described by The Los Angeles Times as "elusive, private and largely unknown to the public."
Early life
Jackson was born Jacqueline Lavinia Davis on March 7, 1944, in Fort Pierce, Florida, to Gertrude "Gertie" Davis (March 7, 1927 – July 13, 2017), an "unwed migrant worker who earned 15 cents an hour picking beans." Jackson never saw her father. Her mother married Navy Chief Petty Officer Julius Frances Brown Sr. when Jackson was five, and the family relocated to Newport News, Virginia. In an interview Jackson stated she believed her mother to be "too strict" when she was a child. She considered becoming a nun when she was a teenager, but eventually decided not to pursue that path. She has four half-siblings through her mother. According to biographer Marshall Frady's book Jesse, Jackson's maternal grandmother was a prostitute.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q107834780. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944, 1962, 2026 and 1927.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jacqueline Jackson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.