Jesse Jackson

JESSE JACKSON WAS ENROLLED AT THE Chicago Theological Seminary in 1965 when he decided to join other like-minded students in traveling to Selma, Ala., where Martin Luther King Jr. was leading a march to the state Capitol in Montgomery.

- OLIVIA-ANNE CLEARY and CALLUM SUTHERLAND

The march became an enduring touchpoint in American civil rights history—as did Jackson, who struck up a friendship with King and eventually became a protégé.