Renowned U.S. civil rights leader Jesse Jackson has passed away at the age of 84. His family announced that he “died peacefully on Tuesday morning, surrounded by his loved ones.”

In their heartfelt statement, the Jackson family described him as a “servant leader,” dedicated not only to them but also to the oppressed, the voiceless, and those overlooked across the globe. His legacy as a champion for social justice is profound and enduring.

Jackson, an eloquent Baptist minister, emerged from the segregated South and became a vital ally to Martin Luther King Jr. He also made two bids for the Democratic presidential nomination, leaving an indelible mark on American politics.

A Chicago resident known for his powerful oratory, Jackson was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017. Despite this, his commitment to advocating for the rights of Black Americans and marginalized communities never wavered, echoing the relentless spirit of his mentor, King, during the 1960s civil rights movement.

Jackson, an inspirational orator and long-time Chicagoan, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017.

The media-savvy Jackson advocated for the rights of Black Americans and other marginalised communities dating back to the turbulent civil rights movement of the 1960s, spearheaded by mentor King — a Baptist minister and towering social activist.

He weathered a spate of controversies but remained the US’ pre-eminent civil rights figure for decades.

Jackson ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, attracting Black voters and many white liberals in unexpectedly strong campaigns.

But he fell short of becoming the first Black major party White House nominee.

Ultimately, he never held elective office.

Jackson founded the Chicago-based civil rights groups Operation PUSH and the National Rainbow Coalition, and served as former US president Bill Clinton’s special envoy to Africa in the 1990s.

Jackson was also instrumental in securing the release of a number of Americans and others held overseas in places including Syria, Cuba, Iraq and Serbia.

Jackson pursued his political ambitions in the 1980s, relying on his mesmerising oratory.

Jackson cast himself as a barrier-breaker for people of colour, the impoverished and the powerless. He electrified the 1988 Democratic convention with a speech telling his life story and calling on Americans to find common ground.

“America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one colour, one cloth,” Jackson told the delegates in Atlanta.

“Wherever you are tonight, you can make it. Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don’t you surrender. Suffering breeds character, character breeds faith. In the end, faith will not disappoint,” Jackson added.

Jackson announced in 2017 at age 76 that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a movement disorder marked by trembling, stiffness and poor balance and coordination, after experiencing symptoms for three years.

‘We stood on his shoulders’

Barack Obama, who was US president between 2009 and 2017, hailed Jackson as a “true giant” and said he had laid the foundation for his own historic victory decades later.

“We stood on his shoulders,” Obama said in a statement.

US President Donald Trump praised Jackson as an engaging, gregarious, and street-smart man and claimed credit for helping him both before and after becoming president as Jackson fought to empower Black Americans.

“Jesse was a force of nature like few others before him,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Kamala Harris, the US’ first Black vice president, who ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 2024, called Jackson “one of America’s greatest patriots”.

Her former boss, ex-president Joe Biden, said in a statement that Jackson “believed in his bones” in the idea that all people are created equal and deserve to be treated as such.

Biden remembered Jackson as “determined and tenacious. Unafraid of the work to redeem the soul of our nation”.

Southern roots

Born on 8 October 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, his mother was a 16-year-old high school student and his father was a 33-year-old married man who lived next door.

His mother later married another man who adopted Jackson. He grew up in the Jim Crow era in the US, an often brutally enforced web of racist laws and practices born in the south to subjugate Black Americans.

Jackson earned a football scholarship at 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 & Technical College, and was arrested when he sought to enter a “whites-only” public library in South Carolina.

He attended Chicago Theological Seminary and was ordained a Baptist minister in 1968 despite failing to graduate.

Jackson became a lieutenant to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr and sometimes travelled with him.

On the day King was assassinated by a white man named James Earl Ray on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Jackson was just a floor below.

Jackson infuriated some of King’s other associates when he told reporters he had cradled the dying King in his arms and was the last person to whom King spoke, an account they disputed.

King, who headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, had installed the energetic Jackson in a leadership role to help create economic opportunities in Black communities.

Jackson later broke with King’s successor at the SCLC, Ralph Abernathy, and set up his own civil rights organisation in Chicago, Operation PUSH, in the early 1970s.

In 1984, Jackson founded the National Rainbow Coalition, whose broader civil rights mission also included women’s rights and gay rights, and the two organisations merged in 1996.

He stepped down as the president of Rainbow-PUSH Coalition in 2023 after more than five decades of leadership and activism.

He met his wife, Jacqueline Brown, during college. They married in 1962 and had five children.

His son Jesse Jackson Jr. was elected to the US House of Representatives, but resigned and served prison time on a fraud conviction. Jackson also had a daughter out of wedlock in 1999 with a woman who worked at his civil rights group, which became a scandal.

He hosted a weekly show on CNN from 1992 to 2000, pressed corporations for Black economic empowerment, and received the highest US civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Clinton in 2000.

Jackson continued his activism later in life, condemning the police killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans in 2020 amid the global racial justice movement.

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