Jealous was eventually suspended for his roles in student protests and moved to Mississippi, where he was a field organizer for a campaign to stop the state from closing two historically black universities. He became a reporter for the Jackson Advocate, an African-American newspaper that was frequently firebombed, reporting on corruption among state prison officials and a black small farmer wrongfully accused of arson. He became managing editor.
After returning to Columbia to complete his political science degree, Jealous was awarded a Rhodes scholarship and studied comparative social research at Oxford University.
Jealous also worked as executive director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a federation of more than 200 black community newspapers.
Hazel Trice Edney worked with Jealous there when he hired her as the group's first female Washington correspondent.
As a journalist, Jealous pushed the reporters to write about issues such as prisoners' rights, the rights of black farmers and discrimination in the mortgage and automobile industries, she said.
Edney, now editor-in-chief of the association, described Jealous as a visionary, strategist and organizer. "He is a person who is able to ... to get people to come together even though they might not necessarily agree to come together for the cause of justice," said Edney. "His heart is really toward human and civil rights in America. It's not a job for him. It really is a mission."
Jealous was later director of the U.S. human rights program at Amnesty International from 2002 to 2005. Most recently he headed the Rosenberg Foundation, a San Francisco group that finances projects to help low-income families and other social justice organizations.
To those that have criticized him as being too young and inexperienced, he says, "Look at my record. I was 26 when I took over the reins of the National Black Newspapers Association. In three years I tripled their budget, tripled the staff. I got the entire industry to end a 90-year-tradition of receiving news from first-class mail and begin downloading it online. So when people look at the record, they see somebody who's more than up to the task."
Education, including school discipline, and voter registration for the 2008 presidential election are among his priorities. And Jealous expects to boost membership by improving technology. "I'm very confident that will be able to reverse the trend in membership within my first term," he said.
