Reverend Jesse Jackson, a towering figure in the American civil rights movement, has died at the age of 84.
WASHINGTON: Veteran US civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson has died at the age of 84. His family announced he passed away peacefully on Tuesday morning.
Jackson was a Baptist minister and a dynamic orator who expanded the space for African Americans on the national stage for over six decades. He marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s and helped fundraise for the cause.
“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. They asked the public to honour his memory by continuing the fight for justice and equality.
The family did not release a cause of death. Jackson had revealed in 2017 that he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative neurological condition.
He was present at many pivotal moments in the struggle for racial justice in the United States. Jackson was with King in Memphis in 1968 when the civil rights leader was assassinated.
He later became the most prominent Black American to run for the US presidency until Barack Obama’s election. Jackson made two unsuccessful attempts to secure the Democratic Party nomination in the 1980s.
Jackson openly wept in the crowd celebrating Obama’s historic 2008 presidential election victory. He also stood with George Floyd’s family in 2021 after a court convicted an ex-police officer of the unarmed Black man’s murder.
Born Jesse Louis Burns in 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina, he later adopted his stepfather’s surname. “I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had a shovel programmed for my hands,” he once said of his humble beginnings.
After participating in civil rights sit-ins and the Selma-to-Montgomery marches, he emerged as a skilled international mediator. Jackson became a prominent advocate for ending apartheid in South Africa and served as a special envoy for Africa under President Bill Clinton.
His missions to free US prisoners took him to Syria, Iraq and Serbia. He founded the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a Chicago-based nonprofit focused on social justice and political activism, in 1996.
Jackson is survived by his wife and six children.
