Muhammad I. Kenyatta, (born Donald Brooks Jackson; March 3, 1944 – January 3, 1992), was an American professor, civil rights leader, and international human rights advocate. Jackson changed his name in the early 1970s to Muhammad Kenyatta. In the 1960s, he worked for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which challenged the denial of voting rights to African-Americans in Mississippi. In 1969 he was elected national vice-president of the Black Economic Development Conference and President of the Greater Philadelphia branch of the organization which was focused on ending poverty in communities of color which they outlined in a revolutionary document referred to as the 'Black Manifesto'. In 1975, Kenyatta had an unsuccessful run for Democratic nomination for mayor of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania against Frank Rizzo. Kenyatta was a fellow in the Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Law School and led a boycott against minority hiring practices at Harvard. He was also active in international human rights education and advocacy through the United Nations and TransAfrica organizations. Early life and education In 1944, Kenyatta was born in Chester, Pennsylvania. He attended a segregated elementary school and was ordained a minister in the Calvary Baptist Church in Chester at the age of 14. He attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania then joined the United States Air Force at age 17 when he could no longer afford tuition. In 1981, Kenyatta received his bachelor's degree from Williams College. Kenyatta attended Harvard Divinity School, where he was a Merrill Fellow (1973–74). He earned his Juris Doctor degree three years later from Harvard Law School and was a Harvard fellow in public interest law in 1984-85 for the Pan African Project. Career In the mid to late 1960s Kenyatta was an organizer for the Head Start Program that provided early childhood education and health services to impoverished children and their families. He supported the occupation of a building owned by Quakers demanding they pay reparations. He also worked for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, a group that challenged the denial of voting right to African-Americans in Mississippi. It was at this time that he received a letter found to have been forged by three F.B.I. agents working in the COINTELPRO program that was aimed at disrupting and discrediting people considered dangerously radical. The letter threatened Kenyatta with warnings to stay away from Tougaloo College in Mississippi, where he had been a student. He left Mississippi, but later sued