American civil rights activist and Baptist minister Jesse Jackson has an estimated net worth of $10 million. He has accumulated his net worth as a prominent civil rights activist, United States shadow Senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997, and the founder of the civil rights organization Rainbow/PUSH. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988.

Born Jesse Louis Burns on October 8, 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina, he is now Jesse Louis Jackson after his mother Helen Burns married Charles Henry Jackson. His real father was Noah Louis Robinson. He attended the Sterling High School in Greenville where he was elected student class president, finished tenth in class and earned letters in baseball, football and basketball. However, he declined a contract from a minor league professional baseball team after graduation in order to attend the University of Illinois on a football scholarship.

Jackson transferred to the North Carolina A&T, a historically black university in Greensboro, North Carolina. While at the university, he played quarterback and was elected student body president. He also became active in civil rights protest against whites-only libraries, theaters and restaurants. He graduated with a B.S. in sociology then attended the Chicago Theological Seminary on a scholarship. He dropped out with three classes left before earning his master’s degree and focused on full-time civil rights movement. He was ordained a minister in 1968. He was awarded his Master of Divinity Degree in 2000 based on his previous credits earned plus his life experience and subsequent work.

Jesse Jackson has close personal ties to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and has spoken positively of Castro in speeches given in the Communist nation. He has served one of several celebrity witnesses to testify at the trial of the “Chicago Eight” featuring defendants Abbie Hoffman, David Dellinger, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Bobby Seale, Rennie Davis, John Froines and Lee Weiner from 1969 to 1970.

Jackson has received several awards and recognition. In 1971, Ebony Magazine has named him to its “100 most influential black Americans” list. He was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP in 1989 and in 1991, he received the American Whig-Cliosophic Society’s James Madison Award for Distinguished Public Service. In 2000, Former President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest honor bestowed to civilians. Scholar Molefi Kete Asante included him on his list of 100 Greatest African-Americans in 2002. He was voted “the most important black leader” in an AP-AOL “Black Voices” poll in February 2006. He inherited the title of High Prince of the Agni people of Côte d'Ivoire from Michael Jackson. He was crowned Prince Côte Nana in August 2009 by Amon N’Douffou V, King of Krindjabo who rules more than a million Agni tribespeople.