Rev. Jesse Jackson – I Am Somebody album art

Published February 22, 2026

I Am Somebody is the title of a spoken word album by Reverend Jesse Jackson that was released on Respect, a sublabel of Stax Records. It contains a recital of the poem “I Am – Somebody”. The cover typography by David Krieger of The Graffiteria features Folio in its mager and fett weights.

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Jackson became active in civil rights protests already as a student. In 1960, he was one of the Greenville Eight, a group of African American students that successfully protested the segregated library system in Greenville, South Carolina. Since 1966, he was involved in the Operation Breadbasket movement, a department of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

The album came out in 1971, three years after Martin Luther King Jr. – the SCLC’s first president and a close friend and mentor of Jackson – was assassinated. The same year, the “Country Preacher” broke off from SCLC and formed Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity). In 1996, it merged with the National Rainbow Coalition, another organization founded by Jackson to pursue social justice, civil rights, and political activism, into Rainbow/PUSH. He served as the organization’s head until July 16, 2023.

Jesse Jackson died February 17, 2026, at the age of 84. The New York Times commemorates him as “charismatic champion of civil rights”. RIP.

The quotes on the back cover are set in Helvetica.

The gatefold shows photographs of Jackson together with several of his companions and fellow campaigners, including Martin Luther King Jr., his widow Coretta Scott King, as well as Richard G. Hatcher and Carl Stokes, the first elected African-American mayors of Gary, Indiana, and Cleveland, Ohio, respectively. The liner notes by Rev. G.E. Redic are set in Helvetica, and the credits at the top right in News Gothic.

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