Copyright 2001 News World Communications, Inc.
The Washington Times

February 26, 2001, Monday, Final Edition

SECTION: PART A; Pg. A11

LENGTH: 518 words

HEADLINE: Jackson sons enjoy success with suds;
Father's bane becomes their business

BYLINE: Jerry Seper and Steve Miller; THE WASHINGTON TIMES

DATELINE: CHICAGO

BODY:

CHICAGO - The beer routes owned by Jonathan and Yusef Jackson, the sons of the famous civil rights activist, take drivers through the economic heart of this city where suds and money flow freely.

Rush Street, Wrigleyville and the watering holes around the stock exchange all are served by the Jacksons' Anheuser-Busch distributorship, which is said to bring in between $30 million and $40 million a year.

The two sons of the Rev.  Jesse Jackson bought the River North establishment in 1998 for a reported $15 million, nearly two decades after their father declared a bitter boycott against the firm.

The elder Mr.  Jackson accused Anheuser-Busch in the early 1980s of failing to hire enough minorities, emphasizing his distaste for their famous beer product by ceremoniously opening a can of Budweiser and dumping the contents on the ground in front of journalists covering the event.

The Jacksons have declined to discuss the specifics of their purchase of the establishment, and repeated calls to Anheuser-Busch for comment on the sale were not returned.

State records show that Yusef Jackson owns 67 percent of the distributorship and serves as the company's president.  Jonathan Jackson owns 23 percent, with the remaining 10 percent belonging to Donald Niestrom Jr., a longtime
Anheuser-Busch employee.

At the time of the sale, August A.  Busch IV, an heir to the beer empire and company vice president, issued a proud statement: "Their energy and broad-based business experience make Yusef and Jonathan Jackson and Donald Niestrom Jr., exactly the kind of people we look for to be wholesalers representing our company in the community."

With the purchase and that statement, the acrimony of the past between the elder Mr.  Jackson and Anheuser-Busch was gone.

In a maverick move at the time, Anheuser-Busch Chairman August Busch III refused in 1982 to address the elder Mr.  Jackson's boycott threats. He said the company had an excellent minorities program and saw no reason to change it.

At one point, the elder Mr.  Jackson publicly accused Mr.  Busch of organizing a campaign against the civil rights leader after his appearance before black businessmen in St.  Louis.  Local businessmen complained that Mr. Jackson asked those at the meeting for a $500 admission fee that would go toward an effort to enhance minority employment at local companies, saying, "if they wanted to play, they had to pay."

The company denied the accusation that it was attempting to smear the civil rights activist, but the Anheuser-Busch boycott was ordered by the elder Mr. Jackson.  A truce was called in 1983, after Washington lawyer Edward Bennett Williams helped negotiate a settlement.

Records show the Jackson consortium obtained a $6.7 million loan from NationsBank to pay Anheuser-Busch for the assets, equipment and the distributorship's building, along with a warehouse on neighboring Goose Island.

Anheuser-Busch spent $10.5 million, including $2.6 million in aid from the city of Chicago, in 1991 to buy the land and build the 79,000-square-foot-building.

GRAPHIC: Photo, Sons of the Rev.  Jesse Jackson join him at the Democratic National Convention in August 1996. From left are: Santita (partially obscured), Yusef, Rep.  Jesse Jackson Jr., Illinois Democrat, and Jonathan., By AP

LOAD-DATE: February 26, 2001