Blyden Brown Jackson Jr. (June 2, 1936 - April 29, 2012) was an American , Marine, Author, and Emergency Medical Technician. He is best known for his novels Operation Burning Candle and Totem. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut and died in Bayonne, New Jersey. During his life he served in the US Marines, where his experiences helped shaped the writing of Operation Burning Candle. He served as the chairman of the New Haven, Connecticut chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in the early-to-mid-1960s. He later founded and became the chairman of East River CORE, located on the east side of 125th street in Harlem, in New York City. He dated Eleanor Holmes Norton in the 1960s. After writing Operation Burning Candle and Totem he was interested in writing a novel about Bellevue Hosp