Charismatic leader of the American civil rights movement Jesse Jackson, an eloquent Baptist minister raised in the American South during the era of segregation, who became a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr. and twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, has died at the age of 85, his family said.
"Our father was a servant leader - not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless and the neglected around the world," the Jackson family said in a statement, according to Reuters.
Jackson, an inspirational speaker and longtime Chicago resident, was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2017.
His death comes as Donald Trump's administration is cracking down on American institutions - from museums to monuments and national parks - to remove what the president calls "anti-American" ideology, leading to the removal of slavery displays, the return of Confederate statues and other moves that civil rights advocates say could undo decades of social progress.
Jackson has advocated for the rights of black Americans and other marginalized communities since the turbulent civil rights movement of the 1960s, led by his mentor King, a Baptist minister and prominent social activist, Reuters recalls.
Jackson weathered a series of controversies, but remained the most prominent American figure in the civil rights struggle for decades.
He ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, appealing to black voters and many white liberals in surprisingly strong campaigns, but he failed to become the first black major-party candidate for the White House. In the end, he never held elected office.
Jackson founded the Chicago civil rights organizations Operation PUSH and the National Rainbow Coalition, and served as Democratic President Bill Clinton's special envoy for Africa during the 1990s. He was also instrumental in securing the release of several Americans and others detained abroad, including in Syria, Cuba, Iraq, and Serbia.
Captivating oratory
Jackson pursued his political ambitions throughout the 1980s, relying on his captivating oratory skills. It was not until the 2008 presidential election, when Barack Obama won, that a black candidate came as close to winning a major party's presidential nomination as Jackson.
In 1984, Jackson won 3,3 million votes, about 18 percent of the total cast, in the Democratic primary, finishing third behind future candidates Walter Mondale and Gary Hart, in the race to challenge Republican President Ronald Reagan. His candidacy lost momentum after it became public that Jackson had privately referred to Jews as "Hymies" and New York as "Hymietown."
In 1988, Jackson was a more polished and "mainstream" candidate, finishing a close second in the Democratic race against Republican George H.W. Bush. Jackson posed a serious threat to the eventual Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis, winning 11 state primaries and caucuses, including several in the South, and winning 6,8 million votes in the nominating contests, or 29 percent.
Jackson presented himself as a barrier-breaker for people of color, the poor, and the powerless. At the 1988 Democratic Convention, he thrilled attendees with a speech in which he told his life story and called on Americans to find common ground.
“America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth,” Jackson told delegates in Atlanta.
"Wherever you are tonight, you can make it. Hold your head high, stick out your chest. You can make it. Sometimes it's dark, but morning comes. Don't give up. Suffering breeds character, character breeds faith. In the end, faith will not disappoint," he added.
In 2017, at the age of 76, Jackson announced that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a movement disorder marked by tremors, stiffness, and poor balance and coordination, after having symptoms for three years.
Southern roots
Born on October 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, his mother was a sixteen-year-old high school student and his father was a thirty-three-year-old married man who lived in the neighborhood. His mother later married another man who adopted Jackson. He grew up during the Jim Crow era in the United States, a network of racist laws and practices originating in the South, often brutally enforced, aimed at subjugating black Americans.
Jackson received a football scholarship to the University of Illinois, but transferred to a historically black college because, he said, he experienced discrimination. He began his civil rights activism while a student at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, and was arrested when he tried to enter a “whites-only” public library in South Carolina.
He attended Chicago Theological Seminary and was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1968, although he did not graduate.
Jackson became one of the closest associates of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and sometimes traveled with him. On the day King was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorain Motel in Memphis by a white man named James Earl Ray, Jackson was just one floor down. He angered some of King's associates when he told reporters that he had held the dying King in his arms and was the last person King spoke to—a claim they disputed.
King, who led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, placed the energetic Jackson in a leadership position to help create economic opportunity in black communities.
Jackson later split with King's successor at the SCLC, Ralph Abernathy, and founded his own civil rights organization, Operation PUSH, in Chicago in the early 1970s. In 1984, he founded the National Rainbow Coalition, whose broader civil rights mission also included women's and gay rights, and the two organizations merged in 1996. He retired as president of the Rainbow-PUSH coalition in 2023 after more than five decades of leadership and activism.
He met his wife, Jacqueline Brown, while he was a student. They married in 1962 and had five children. His son, Jesse Jackson Jr., was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, but resigned and served time in prison for fraud. Jackson also fathered a daughter out of wedlock in 1999 with a woman who worked for his civil rights organizations, which caused a scandal.
Jackson was known for his personal diplomacy. After securing the release of U.S. Navy pilot Robert Goodman Jr. from Syria in 1984, President Ronald Reagan invited Jackson to the White House and expressed his gratitude for the "mission of mercy." Jackson met with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 1990 to secure the release of hundreds of Americans and others after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. He also brokered the release of dozens of Cuban and American prisoners from Cuban prisons in 1984, as well as the release of three U.S. airmen held in Serbia in 1999.
From 1992 to 2000, he hosted a Sunday show on CNN, pressured corporations to economically empower black people, and in 2000 received America's highest civilian award – the Presidential Medal of Freedom – from Clinton.
Jackson continued his activism in later years, condemning the police killing of George Floyd and other black Americans in 2020, during a global movement for racial justice.
Bonus video:
