• Faith: Christian
• Career: Public Figure
• Birthday:  July 26, 1928
• Date of Death:  June 27, 2018

Joe Jackson was the patriarch of the Jackson family of entertainers and a talent manager. He was inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Musical Hall of Fame in 2014. He passed away in 2018 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Jackson was born in Fountain Hill, Arkansas, to Crystal Lee and Samuel Jackson, the eldest of five children. Jackson recalled that his father was strict and authoritarian, and he described himself in his memoir The Jacksons as a "lonely child that had only a few friends." After his parents separated when he was 12, his mother, two brothers, and sister moved to East Chicago, Indiana, a suburb outside Chicago, while he moved with his father to Oakland, California. When he was 18, his father remarried, and he moved to East Chicago to live with his mother.

He soon got a job in East Chicago at Inland Steel Company but didn’t finish high school. While in East Chicago, he started pursuing his dreams of becoming a boxer and found success with the Golden Gloves program. While he was preparing for a professional boxing career, he met 17-year-old Katherine Jackson, who also lived in East Chicago and attended Washington High School. Joe was married to another woman but was divorced less than a year before he started dating Katherine. Joseph and Katherine married on November 5, 1949. The following year, they bought a small two-bedroom home in Gary, Indiana. Their first child, Maureen “Rebbie” Jackson, was born that same year. While still employed at Inland Steel, Jackson left his hopes of becoming a professional boxer to support his family and started working there as a full-time crane operator.

He later took a part-time job at American Foundries in East Chicago. In the meantime, his wife Katherine tended to their growing family. During the late 1950s, she started working part-time at Sears in Gary. The couple went on to raise ten children, as their son Brandon, Marlon’s twin, died just after he was born. During the 1950s, Jackson briefly performed with his younger brother Luther in their blues band, The Falcons, playing guitar. Despite their efforts, The Falcons didn’t get a recording deal and broke up after one of their members founded his band in 1952. That band became a successful doo-wop group named The Spaniels.

In the early 1960s, Joe Jackson started pushing his sons in a musical direction after they started playing around with his musical instruments while he was at work. He first started working with his four eldest sons, Jackie, David, Tito, and Jermaine. Younger sons Michael and Marlon were eventually put in the band. Jackson started enforcing intense and long rehearsals for his sons. The band initially performed under the name The Jackson Brothers, but after including Marlon and Michael in the group, their name was changed to The Jackson 5. After a couple of years of performing in local talent contests and high school functions, The Jackson 5 got a color TV after the judges awarded them second place. Jackson then booked them in more professional venues, eventually landing a gig at the Apollo Theater. The group eventually auditioned for Motown Records and received their contract in March 1969.

What religion was Joe Jackson?

Although his children were raised Jehovah’s Witnesses by their mother, Joe Jackson identified as a Christian. Jackson faced controversy in the late 1980s, as his image became tarnished as the media reported stories told by his children that he was abusive toward them. Allegedly, Jackson ordered each of them to call him “Joseph,” which contributed to several siblings having been estranged from him.