Jesse Jackson, civil rights icon and former US presidential candidate, dies aged 84, family reveals

Civil rights icon Jesse Jackson has died at the age of 84. 

Though a cause of death was not immediately given, Jackson’s family said he died peacefully surrounded by loved ones on Tuesday morning. 

In a statement, the Jackson family said: ‘Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world. 

‘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 honour his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.’

He is survived by six children and his wife of more than 60 years, Jacqueline Brown. 

In 2017, Jackson revealed he had Parkinson’s disease. He was treated for the illness as an outpatient at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago for at least two years before he made his diagnosis public. 

He had also been managing a condition called progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) for over a decade, a disorder that damages parts of the brain and affects a sufferer’s walking, balance, eye movements and swallowing. 

He was hospitalised for COVID-19 in August 2021, and again in November after he fell and hit his head while helping Howard University students protest poor living conditions on campus. 

Born in 1941 in the Jim Crow South, Jesse Jackson would go on to become one of the most influential political activists of the late twentieth century. 

He rose to prominence as an early disciple of Martin Luther King Jr. and became one of the nation’s most recognised civil rights leaders. 

Jackson partook in the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965. Those who saw him there said he did not go unnoticed.

‘He immediately took charge,’ recalled former UN Ambassador Andrew Young, then a top deputy to King. ‘It was almost like he came in and, while people were lining up, he wouldn’t get in line. He would start lining people up.’

In 1971, he formed Operation PUSH -People United to Save Humanity (later changed to People United to Serve Humanity). The goal was to pursue social justice, civil rights and political activism. ‘It would take him very, very far,’ wrote the New York Times. 

PUSH’s aim was to pressure politicians to improve economic opportunities for black and poor people of all races. Using boycotts (or the threat of them), on white-owned companies, PUSH would win franchises, supply contracts and jobs for many minorities. 

Jackson led successful boycotts against Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, Heublein, Burger King and Seven Up which eventually translated to more minority employment.  

In 1984, Jackson established the Rainbow Coalition whose mission was to establish equal rights for African Americans, women and homosexuals and run programs for housing, social services and voter registration. The two organisations merged in 1996 to form the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. 

He twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, first in 1984 and again in 1988. 

Jackson resigned from his post as president of Operation PUSH in 1984 to run for president of the United States. 

He was the third African American candidate to do so on a major political party ticket, after Shirley Chisholm sought the Democratic nomination in 1972 and Frederick Douglass received a single roll call vote at the 1888 Republican National Convention. 

Jackson was immediately written off as a fringe candidate, but he took political pundits by surprise when he placed third in the primary, behind Senator Gary Hart and Vice President Walter Mondale. 

In the first race, he won more than 18% of the primary vote and a handful of primaries and caucuses. Four years later, he won 11 primaries and caucuses.  

According to a New York Times article published at the time of his second run for the White House, ‘most political analysts give him little chance of being nominated – partly because he is black, partly because of his unretrenched liberalism.’ 

The trailblazing civil rights leader captured 6.9 million votes and won the primary in 11 states. Once again. exceeding expectations by doubling his previous results, the New York Times called 1988, ‘the Year of Jackson.’ 

Jackson’s influence extended to international matters in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1983, he travelled to Syria to secure the release of a captured American Navy pilot named Robert Goodman. 

In June 1984 Jackson negotiated the release of 22 Americans being held in Cuba after an invitation by Fidel Castro. He caused a sensation when he dragooned the Cuban president into attending church with him on Sunday during his visit.  

On the brink of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Jackson travelled to Iraq to plead with Saddam Hussein for the release of 20 American and British nationals who he was holding hostage as a ‘human shield.’ 

In 1997, Jackson travelled to meet the Kenyan president as President Bill Clinton’s special envoy to promote free and fair elections. 

Two years later, the budding statesman arbitrated the release of three POWs who were captured on the Macedonian border while patrolling with a UN peacekeeping unit. 

The negotiation with the Yugoslavian president, at the height of the Kosovo War, was not sanctioned by Clinton’s administration.  

President Clinton awarded Jesse Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000, praising him for his ‘keen intellect and loving hear.’ During the ceremony, Clinton joked: ‘For a chance, I don’t have to follow Jesse Jackson.’ 

More to follow.