Rev. Jesse Jackson, civil rights icon and two-time presidential candidate, dies at 84
Courtesy NBC News
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the longtime civil rights activist, Baptist minister and two-time presidential candidate, died Tuesday at age 84, his family said.
A cause of death was not immediately given. His family said he died peacefully surrounded by his loved ones.
He was admitted to a hospital in November and had been living for more than a decade with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), according to his Rainbow PUSH Coalition, which affects patients’ ability to walk and swallow and can lead to dangerous complications.
Jackson revealed he had Parkinson’s in 2017. He was treated as an outpatient at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago for at least two years before he shared the diagnosis with the public.
At the time, the Rev. Al Sharpton reflected on Jackson’s impact on American politics and the Civil Rights Movement.
“As I watched him, I thought about the greatness of this man,” Sharpton said then. “How he continued Martin Luther King’s movement for justice, how he cemented it in the North and made the King movement truly national. … He changed the nation. He served in ways he never got credit. No one in our lifetime served longer and stronger. We pray for him, because he’s given his life for us.”
Public observances will be held in Chicago and future plans for celebration of life events will be announced by the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Jackson family said in its statement Tuesday.
Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina, and rose to prominence in the civil rights era, participating in demonstrations alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. His activism spanned decades, including two runs for the Democratic presidential nomination, in 1984 and 1988.
In the first race, he won more than 18% of the primary vote and a handful of primaries and caucuses.
“Merely by being black and forcing other candidates to consider his very real potential to garner black votes, which they need, Jackson has had an impact,” read a 1984 New York Times profile.
Four years later, he built on that success by winning 11 primaries and caucuses.
Jackson began his work as an organizer with the Congress of Racial Equality, participating in marches and sit-ins. He attended North Carolina A&T State University and graduated with a degree in sociology. He began rallying student support for King during his divinity studies at Chicago Theological Seminary and participated in the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march in Alabama.
Shortly afterward, Jackson joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or SCLC, to work alongside King full time. He drew praise from King as a young man running the SCLC’s economic development and empowerment program, Operation Breadbasket — “we knew he was going to do a good job, but he’s done better than a good job,” King said.
As he grew as an organizer, Jackson married Jacqueline Brown, who survives him, in 1962. They have five children, including former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill.
Jackson, who was at the motel in Memphis, Tennessee, with King when he was assassinated in 1968, did not let up after King’s death. He took his vision for Black liberation even further by founding People United to Save Humanity, or PUSH, in 1971. He resigned from the SCLC that year to start PUSH after he was suspended from the organization; he was accused of using the SCLC for personal gain. PUSH worked to improve economic conditions of Black communities in the country and later expanded to politics with direct action campaigns and social areas through a weekly radio show and awards for Black people.
Jackson’s 1984 presidential bid prompted the launch of his National Rainbow Coalition, which opposed President Ronald Reagan’s policies and advocated for social programs, voting rights and affirmative action. PUSH and the National Rainbow Coalition merged in 1996 and are now the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.
His 1984 campaign angered some Democrats who said his ideas were too left-leaning and would hurt the party in the general election. Jackson dismissed the concerns.
“The great responsibility that we have today is to put the poor and the near-poor back on front of the American agenda,” Jackson said of the 1984 campaign in a 1996 interview with PBS. “This is a dangerous mission, and yet it’s a necessary mission!”
In recent decades, Jackson was outspoken about leading politicians, including former President Barack Obama. He condemned Donald Trump’s presidency, saying, “Fifty years of civil rights have been threatened.” Jackson endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the 2020 presidential election, and Sanders made sure to praise him on the campaign trail.
“It is one of the honors of my life to be supported by a man who has put his life on the line for the last 50 years fighting for justice,” Sanders said at the time.
