Jesse Jackson, U.S. civil rights leader, dies at 84

WASHINGTON,— Jesse Jackson, a prominent U.S. civil rights leader and Baptist minister who worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr. and twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination, has died at age 84, his family announced Tuesday.

“Our father was a servant leader, not just to our family, but to the oppressed, voiceless, and overlooked around the world,” the Jackson family said in a statement.

Jackson, known for his powerful speeches and long-term residence in Chicago, had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017.

His passing comes amid a period when the administration of President Donald Trump challenged U.S. cultural institutions, including museums and national parks, seeking to remove what the president described as “anti-American” narratives.

Civil rights groups have said the administration’s moves, such as removing slavery exhibits and restoring Confederate statues, threatened to roll back decades of social progress.

Jackson spent decades advocating for the rights of Black Americans and other marginalized communities, beginning during the civil rights movement of the 1960s under the mentorship of King, a Baptist minister and social activist.

Despite occasional controversies, Jackson remained one of the most recognizable civil rights figures in the country for decades.

He ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988. His campaigns drew support from Black voters and liberal white Americans, but he did not become the first Black major party nominee. Jackson never held an elected office.

Jackson founded Chicago-based civil rights organizations Operation PUSH and the National Rainbow Coalition. He also served as a special envoy to Africa under Democratic President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

Jackson played a key role in securing the release of Americans and others held overseas, including in Syria, Cuba, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Serbia.

Jackson’s political campaigns in the 1980s relied heavily on his charismatic speeches. He remained the closest a Black candidate had come to a major party presidential nomination until Barack Obama’s election in 2008.

In 1984, Jackson won 3.3 million votes in Democratic primaries, or roughly 18 percent, finishing third behind eventual nominee Walter Mondale and Gary Hart. His campaign lost momentum after reports surfaced that he had privately referred to Jewish people as “Hymies” and called New York “Hymietown.”

Jackson returned in 1988 as a more polished candidate. He finished a close second to Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis, winning 11 state contests, including several in the South, and collecting 6.8 million votes, about 29 percent of those cast. At the Democratic convention, he electrified audiences with a speech highlighting his life story and urging Americans to find common ground.

“America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth,” Jackson told delegates in Atlanta.

“Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don’t you surrender. Suffering breeds character, character breeds faith. In the end, faith will not disappoint.”

Jackson was born Oct. 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina. His mother was a 16-year-old high school student and his father a 33-year-old married man who lived next door. His mother later married another man who adopted Jackson. He grew up in the Jim Crow South, a region of strict segregation laws targeting Black Americans.

Jackson earned a football scholarship to the University of Illinois but transferred to a historically Black college after experiencing discrimination.

He began civil rights activism as a student at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College and was arrested for attempting to enter a whites-only library in South Carolina. He later attended Chicago Theological Seminary and was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1968, despite not completing his degree.

Jackson worked closely with King, traveling with him and assisting in organizing economic programs for Black communities.

On the day King was assassinated, Jackson was reportedly just a floor below and claimed to have cradled King in his arms, a point disputed by some associates.

He later established Operation PUSH in Chicago in the early 1970s and founded the National Rainbow Coalition in 1984. The two groups merged in 1996 into the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition, which he led until stepping down in 2023.

Jackson married Jacqueline Brown in 1962 and had five children. His son Jesse Jackson Jr. served in the U.S. House of Representatives before resigning amid a fraud conviction. Jackson also had a daughter out of wedlock in 1999, which drew public scrutiny.

Jackson was known for personal diplomacy, helping secure the release of American prisoners in Syria, Iraq, Cuba, and Serbia. He hosted a weekly CNN show from 1992 to 2000, pushed for Black economic empowerment, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Clinton in 2000.

He continued to speak out on civil rights issues later in life, condemning the 2020 police killing of George Floyd and other acts of racial injustice.

(With files from Reuters)