Veteran US civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson, one of the country’s most prominent Black figures, died peacefully on Tuesday at the age of 84, AFP reported.
A Baptist minister, Jackson had been active in the civil rights movement since the 1960s, marching alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and helping raise funds to support the struggle for equality.
“Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” Jackson’s family said in a statement.
“His unwavering belief in justice, equality, and love uplifted millions, and we ask you to honor his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.”
Cause of death
The family did not disclose a cause of death. However, in 2017, Jackson announced that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a progressive neurological disorder, AFP reported.
Who was Jesse Jackson?
He was hospitalized for observation in November due to another neurodegenerative condition, according to media reports. A powerful speaker and skilled mediator in international disputes, the longtime Baptist minister broadened opportunities for African Americans on the national stage for more than six decades, AFP reported.
He was the most prominent Black candidate to seek the US presidency—making two unsuccessful bids for the Democratic Party nomination in the 1980s—until Barack Obama was elected to the White House in 2009.
“We stood on his shoulders,” Obama wrote on X, saying Jackson laid the foundation for his own historic victory decades later and praising Jackson as “a true giant.”
Trump says ‘he was a good man’
US President Donald Trump praised Jackson as an engaging, gregarious, and street-smart man and claimed credit for helping him both before and after becoming president as Jackson fought to empower Black Americans.
“Jesse was a force of nature like few others before him,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Trump has a checkered record on race relations. He told The New York Times last month that because of civil rights protections eras “white people were treated very badly.”
Trump insists whites in South Africa are victims of genocide and his administration regularly emphasizes its focus on people with white European roots. Last week Trump refused to apologize over a video posted to his social media account that depicted the Obamas as monkeys.
Long Battle
Kamala Harris, the first Black vice president and the Democratic candidate defeated by Trump in the 2024 election, praised Jackson as “one of America’s greatest patriots.” Her former boss, ex-president Joe Biden, said in a statement that Jackson “believed in his bones” that all people are created equal and should be treated accordingly, AFP reported.
Biden remembered Jackson as “determined and tenacious. Unafraid of the work to redeem the soul of our Nation.”
Jackson’s moments in long battle for racial justice
Jackson was present at many pivotal moments in the long struggle for racial justice in the United States, including standing beside Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis in 1968 when the civil rights icon was assassinated.
He was seen openly weeping in the crowd as Barack Obama celebrated his 2008 presidential victory, and in 2021 he stood with the family of George Floyd after a court convicted a police officer of murdering the unarmed Black man during an arrest.
Jackson was born Jesse Louis Burns on October 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, to an unwed teen mother and a former professional boxer.
He later adopted the last name of his stepfather, Charles Jackson.
“I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had a shovel programmed for my hands,” he once said.
He excelled in his segregated high school and earned a football scholarship to the University of Illinois, but later transferred to the predominantly Black Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina, where he received a degree in sociology.
In 1960, he took part in his first sit-in in Greenville and later joined the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights marches, where he drew the attention of Martin Luther King Jr..
Jackson went on to serve as a mediator and envoy in several high-profile international efforts. He became a leading voice against apartheid in South Africa and, in the 1990s, was appointed presidential special envoy for Africa by Bill Clinton. His missions to secure the release of American prisoners took him to Syria, Iraq and Serbia.
In 1996, he founded the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a Chicago-based nonprofit dedicated to social justice and political activism.
He is survived by his wife and six children.
