000028 - Arnold Pinkney, Jesse Jackson Campaign Manager

Arnold Pinkney (January 6, 1931, Youngstown, Ohio - January 13, 2014, Cleveland, Ohio) was a political strategist and civil rights activist who helped elect Ohio's first black congressman and managed Jesse Jackson's unsuccessful 1984 presidential campaign.  

Pinkney was born in Youngstown, Ohio, on January 6, 1931. His father died three months before he finished high school, so he worked in steel mills to help his family make ends meet. 

Pinkney graduated from Albion College in Michigan, where he won letters in football, track, baseball and basketball. During a stint in the Army, he played baseball with major leaguers. Paul O’Dea, a scout for the Cleveland Indians, told him that he had a shot at making the big leagues by his late 20s, but advised him to go to law school instead. “Your race needs more lawyers than baseball players,” Mr. Pinkney recalled Mr. O’Dea saying.  

Pinkney took the advice and attended what is now Case Western Reserve University School of Law, but he dropped out for financial reasons. He then became one of the first black agents hired by the Prudential Insurance Company of America and later opened a successful insurance agency. As a civil rights activist, he led a membership drive for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.) and joined the picketing of a Cleveland supermarket that had refused to hire blacks.

Pinkney began his political career by helping out on local campaigns for judges, then volunteered for Carl Stokes’s mayoral campaign. Louis Stokes tapped him to be his paid campaign manager in 1968.  Pinkney was later president of the Cleveland Board of Education and twice sought the city’s mayoralty, losing in a three-man race in 1971 and again in 1975. After the second defeat, he moved to Shaker Heights, a Cleveland suburb.  

Mr. Jackson said he had chosen Mr. Pinkney to run his 1984 campaign because he was experienced in national campaigns as a “voice of pragmatism.” 

Arnold Pinkney had a long career in Democratic political campaigns including the 1968 campaign of Louis Stokes, who became Ohio's first black member of Congress. He also advised Jackson, Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes and Gov. Richard Celeste.

He was special adviser to the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus and was co-founder of Pinkney-Perry Insurance Agency, Ohio's oldest and largest minority-owned insurance company.