The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights chief, Baptist minister and pioneering politician who launched two bids for the U.S. presidency, died on Tuesday morning on the age of 84, his household mentioned in an announcement.
“Our father was a servant chief — not solely to our household, however to the oppressed, the unvoiced, and the neglected around the globe,” the household assertion mentioned.
“We shared him with the world, and in return, the world grew to become a part of our prolonged household. His unwavering perception in justice, equality, and love uplifted hundreds of thousands, and we ask you to honor his reminiscence by persevering with the struggle for the values he lived by,” it added.
Jackson is survived by his spouse, Jacqueline Jackson, whom he married in 1962, and 6 youngsters.
This file photograph reveals Rev. Jesse Jackson in Auburn Gresham, Chicago, on June 25, 2021.
Chicago Tribune/TNS
Jackson had weathered a myriad of well being points in recent times. In November 2025, Jackson was hospitalized in Chicago for therapy of issues from progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a neurodegenerative situation that he had been managing for a decade, based on an announcement from the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the civil rights group Jackson based.
“Reverend Jackson is in secure situation and is respiratory with out the help of machines,” the Jackson household mentioned in an announcement a number of days after Jackson’s hospitalization, in response to hypothesis about his situation. “Opposite to particular experiences, he’s not on life help.”
“The Jackson household extends heartfelt appreciation for the numerous prayers and type messages supplied throughout this time,” the assertion additionally mentioned. Jackson was released from the hospital the next week.
An extra household replace on Jackson’s well being got here in mid-December 2025, when it launched an announcement saying that Jackson had been launched from an acute-care facility the place he had “obtained further care” following his hospital launch. The assertion additionally mentioned Jackson “has battled a number of infections according to the development of his PSP prognosis” for “the final a number of months.”
In 2017, Jackson introduced that he’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Nonetheless, the November 2025 announcement mentioned that the PSP prognosis had been confirmed the earlier April.
Jackson additionally underwent gall bladder surgical procedure in 2021 and was hospitalized later that yr after falling whereas protesting with college students at Howard College in Washington, D.C. He additionally was hospitalized for COVID-19 that August.
Starting his profession as a protégé of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Jackson rapidly rose to change into one of many nation’s most outstanding and influential civil rights leaders. In 1971, he fashioned the nonprofit Operation PUSH – Folks United to Save/Serve Humanity – to advocate for social and financial parity for Black People.
Jackson ran for president twice, each occasions as a Democrat, putting third for the occasion’s nomination in 1984 and second in 1988, marking probably the most profitable presidential runs of any Black candidate previous to Barack Obama’s twenty years later.
Following his first marketing campaign, Jackson fashioned the nonprofit Nationwide Rainbow Coalition with the said objective of affording minority People a higher political voice. In 1996, Jackson merged the teams into Rainbow/PUSH, and served as the top of each till 2023.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson stops by an indication outdoors the U.S. Capitol to protest the expiration of the federal moratorium on residential evictions in Washington, U.S., on Aug. 2, 2021.
Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
Jackson was additionally elected in 1990 because the shadow delegate for the District of Columbia, serving a single time period. In 1999, President Invoice Clinton awarded Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Jesse Louis Jackson was born Oct. 8, 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina, within the segregated South, and grew up poor in a sharecropping household. He was a gifted pupil and athlete, graduating from highschool with provides for a minor league baseball contract and a Massive 10 soccer scholarship.
He opted as a substitute to attend the College of Illinois earlier than transferring to and graduating from North Carolina A&T, a traditionally Black college. He then started theological research earlier than going to work full-time with Dr. King and the Southern Christian Management Convention (SCLC). He was ordained a Baptist a minister in 1968.
In 1966, 24-year-old Jackson grew to become head of the Chicago Chapter of the nascent Operation Breadbasket, the financial activism arm of the SCLC, and was appointed its nationwide director the next yr. He additionally helped set up the Chicago Freedom Motion to work for open housing and college desegregation.
Jackson participated in lots of the civil rights motion’s landmark moments, together with the March on Washington in 1963, the place King delivered his well-known “I Have a Dream” speech, and the Selma to Montgomery marches in Alabama in 1965. He was additionally with Dr. King when the civil rights chief was fatally shot on the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.
Reflecting on Dr. King’s reminiscence virtually 50 years later, Jackson mentioned he was impressed by his capability to stay undaunted even within the face of overwhelming challenges.
“He’s a body of reference. His resurrection is highly effective,” Jackson mentioned in a 2018 interview with ABC Chicago station WLS.
Talking of King’s assassination, Jackson added, “All I can keep in mind is a few voice saying, ‘One bullet can not kill a motion.’ We should preserve going … In case your key participant is damage on the sphere you can’t forfeit the sport, you need to internalize your ache and preserve marching and preserve transferring, and we’ve to be devoted to his cost 50 years later.”
Three years after King’s homicide, Jackson left the SCLC and based Operation PUSH, a social justice group devoted to enhancing the financial situations of Black communities throughout the U.S.
The group fought for higher instructional and employment alternatives for Black People and was profitable in compelling main companies to undertake affirmative motion insurance policies benefiting Black employees.
Jackson’s social activism advanced into political ambition in within the Eighties, when he launched two campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination, in 1984 and 1988. He positioned third in main voting in 1984 and got here in second to Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis in 1988, successful 12 primaries and caucuses and receiving some 6.9 million complete votes.
As solely the second Black American to mount a nationwide presidential marketing campaign, after New York Rep. Shirley Chisholm in 1972, Jackson’s historic runs have been probably the most profitable by a Black candidate till President Barack Obama received in 2008.
Jackson in the end did win political workplace, when he was elected to serve within the U.S. Senate as a shadow delegate for the District of Columbia, from 1991 to 1997.
Jackson additionally used his abilities as a negotiator to facilitate the liberty of individuals held overseas, resulting in the discharge of Navy pilot Robert Goodman in 1984 from captivity in Lebanon after his aircraft was shot down, in addition to three American prisoners of struggle held by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in 1999.
In 2000, President Invoice Clinton awarded Jackson a frequent critic of Clinton and his insurance policies – the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in recognition of Jackson’s many years of social activism.
“It is laborious to think about how we might have come so far as we’ve with out the inventive energy, the eager mind, the loving coronary heart, and the relentless ardour of Jesse Louis Jackson,” Clinton said at the ceremony. “And God is not achieved with him but.”
Jackson was the recipient of quite a few different awards all through his lifetime, together with the NAACP President’s Award and the American Institute for Public Service’s Jefferson Award. In 2021, Jackson obtained France’s highest order of advantage, the Commander of the Legion of Honor.
In later years, Jackson was a vocal proponent for the reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He was additionally concerned in the UK’s Operation Black Vote to advertise minority participation in British elections.
In July 2023, Jackson stepped down as head of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition after greater than 50 years as its head. “We’re resigning, we’re not retiring,” Jackson mentioned on the time, vowing to proceed combating for social justice causes.
ABC Information’ Ahmad Hemingway contributed to this report.
