Jesse Jackson, Civil Rights Leader and Presidential Hopeful, Dies at 84

Jesse Jackson, a prominent figure of the U.S. civil rights movement and protégé of Martin Luther King Jr., has died at 84, his family confirmed in a statement Tuesday.

“Our father was a servant leader—not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” the statement read. “We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family. 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.”

The cause of Jackson’s death has not yet been disclosed, but his family said he “died peacefully.”

Jackson, a two-time presidential candidate, announced in 2017 that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease some years prior.

In November, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a Chicago-based nonprofit founded by Jackson, confirmed that the civil rights leader had been living with a neurodegenerative condition called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) for over a decade. 

“He was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease; however, last April, his PSP condition was confirmed,” the nonprofit said, in a statement that announced Jackson had been hospitalized. 

He was discharged from Northwestern Memorial Hospital later that month, and was said to be in a “stable condition.”

A life of leadership

Born in 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina, Jackson attended the University of Illinois on a football scholarship before transferring to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, a historically Black school in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he graduated in 1964. He then moved to Chicago, on a Rockefeller grant, to study at the Chicago Theological Seminary.

Already active within the civil rights movement, Jackson joined other students in traveling to Selma, Alabama, as Martin Luther King Jr. led a march to the Capitol in Montgomery.

In 1966, when King relocated to Chicago to launch the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s (SCLC) northern branch, Jackson soon followed suit and worked on SCLC’s “Operation Breadbasket,” an economic justice program.

Jackson was with King before his assassination in April 1968, and was ordained as a Reverend in June that same year.

Jackson founded his own movement, the People United to Save Humanity (PUSH) in 1971, which later merged with another one of his foundations, the Rainbow Coalition, in 1996 to become the Rainbow PUSH Coalition (RPC).

The RPC describes itself as a “multi-racial, multi-issue, progressive, international membership organization fighting for social change.”

In the later years, when working in and around politics, Jackson helped negotiate the release of several detained and captured Americans around the world. In 2000, in part due to these efforts, Jackson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then-President Bill Clinton.