Nearly 20 years before Black Twitter’s #OscarsSoWhite campaign generated a firestorm over the lack of Black nominees at the Academy Awards, Rev. Jesse Jackson lit a spark with a call to protest the 1996 ceremony. That year, just one Black person, short film director Dianne Houston, was included among 166 nominees. ‘We are going to open up the consciousness of Hollywood,’ said Jackson , who died at 84 on Tuesday. The Chicago civil rights leader called for attendees to wear a symbol against ‘race exclusion and cultural violence’ in Hollywood, and others to picket outside of ABC-TV affiliates in Chicago and other cities. Ultimately, the protest faltered, and Jackson was criticized by the academy, viewers and other industry insiders, including Black actors who attended the event. But the civil rights leader’s critiques proved prescient amid the public outcry over the 2015 and 2016 ceremonies, which did not recognize any actors of color in the acting categories. Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks to reporters at the Operation PUSH Soul Picnic at the 142nd Street Armory in New York, March 26, 1972. Left to right are: Betty Shabazz, behind Jackson, widow of Malcolm X; Jackson; Tom Todd, vice president of PUSH; Aretha Franklin and Louis Stokes. Jackson had an outsized impact on American culture and the inclusion of Black film in Hollywood. Jim Wells/AP By contrast, at this year’s forthcoming Academy Awards, multiple actors of color are up for trophies, with Black director Ryan Coogler’s film ‘Sinners’ garnering 16 nominations, making it the most-Oscar-nominated movie in history. Reflecting on the progress since Jackson’s early advocacy, industry veterans and young filmmakers alike are celebrating Jackson for not only raising awareness about inequities in Hollywood, but also the actions he took to create opportunities for Black filmmakers and entertainers. ‘He was always focusing on these questions of equity and leadership, and that’s what he was bringing to the Oscars campaign,’ said Jacqueline Stewart, a cinema and media studies professor at the University of Chicago and former director and president of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. ‘He was bringing visibility to the issue even though people had mixed responses. But, without a doubt, it created the kind of cultural conversation that eventually did lead the academy to make some important changes.’ Prior to his Academy Awards protest, Jackson formed the Rainbow Coalition on Fairness in the Media, demanding that studio and network executives hire more people of color and support diverse films and TV shows. But the movement failed to gain momentum . Later, he struggled to generate support at the 1996 Oscars in part because the ceremony featured two prominent Black participants that people wanted to support: producer Quincy Jones and host Whoopi Goldberg, who poked fun at Jackson from the stage. Still, Jackson should be credited with sounding the alarm about marginalization in the industry, said Michael NJ Wright, a filmmaker and adjunct professor of instruction at Columbia College Chicago. ‘There was this attitude that Black people made Black movies, women made women’s movies, and white men made everything,’ Wright said. ‘It was just an understanding of the way the movie business functioned.’ Michael NJ Wright (far right), a filmmaker and adjunct professor of instruction at Columbia College Chicago, poses with Rev. Jesse Jackson (seated) during a panel at the Operation PUSH Headquarters in Chicago in 2024. Courtesy of Michaeal NJ Wright But others picked up where Jackson left off two years later, when the academy failed to nominate any people of color for acting awards. As one of few artists of color recognized in other categories, Spike Lee spoke