"The protege of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. joined calls by NAACP members and other movement leaders in the late 1980s to replace "colored" and "blacks" with a term they thought better represented the community's ancestral roots and brought a sense of dignity. "To be called African Americans has cultural integrity - it puts us in our proper historical context," Jackson said at the time. "Every ethnic group in this country has a reference to some base, some historical, cultural base.""
""African American" was used by some scholars long before the push by Jackson and the NAACP, but it didn't enter the common vernacular until the reverend drummed up community support. The term appears as early as 1782 on a title page to a pamphlet of a sermon "By an African American" published in Philadelphia, according to research by Yale law librarian Fred R. Shapiro."
Jesse Jackson promoted widespread use of the term "African American" in the late 1980s to replace "colored" and "blacks" and to reclaim cultural identity. He argued the term provides cultural integrity and places the community in its proper historical context. Jackson ran for president twice, led civil rights efforts after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, and advocated for voting rights, jobs and education for poor and underrepresented people. He believed community-driven terminology would boost self-esteem. The phrase had earlier scholarly use and appeared on a 1782 pamphlet, but Jackson and allied leaders popularized its common vernacular adoption.
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