Ebook: Take Me with You

During the spring of my fourteenth year, I ran away from home. On a cold night in early February, I disappeared into a Kansas snowstorm. My family lived outside Kansas City. For much of our time together, Dad preached at Edwardsville Christian Church. We lived in the parsonage, a two-bedroom box just south of the railroad tracks separating the white and black parts of town. As the Civil Rights movement heated up, Mom crossed the tracks whenever she could. For that, and for other indiscernible reasons, Dad beat her.

My story begins during America's Civil Rights movement, a time when my family fell apart and my future became a struggle between parents and ways of life. Much of my struggle took place within my father's house.

In running away, I found a new life. But I wasn't alone. My journey also marked a rebirth for mom and for Jefferson Jackson, the black Baptist preacher who became my father and who raised me. Together, we lived in hiding and in poverty. From that beginning, I've risen to the highest levels of international charity, serving as senior vice president of World Vision U.S. and vice president of PATH before joining Global Impact as CEO. Take Me with You delivers a first-person narrative of a boy who found his future by running away. My childhood and escape from abuse has influenced my present work and driven a personal inspiration to leave a lasting mark on humanity.

Today, as the CEO and President of Global Impact, I've made a career of trying to stop cycles of abuse, racism, and inequality. I'm the sum of my story, this memoir rooted in love, faith, and moral courage. Take Me with You is one boy's story about choosing love, forgiveness, and the charity within—and about choosing to be positive.

Take Me with You is a call to action to help those in need, especially children. As the statistics reveal, there is an alarming need both in the United States and throughout the world: