Civil rights icon Jesse Jackson dies at 84
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The Rev. Jesse Jackson poses for a portrait at his Operation PUSH office in 1982. Photo: Steve Kagan/Getty Images
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a civil rights icon who spent his career fighting against racial inequality and injustice, and who made two historic runs for the presidency, died Tuesday, his family said in a statement. He was 84.
The big picture: Jackson leaves behind an expansive legacy, starting with his time alongside Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to founding Operation Rainbow PUSH on the South Side of Chicago.
- While Jackson was not from Chicago, he will always be linked to the city and the causes he championed.
The family's statement did not address Jackson's cause of death. He had been suffering from several illnesses for years.
- "Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world," the Jackson family said in a statement. "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."
- "Rev. Jackson is my superhero. While other boys my age wanted to be Michael Jordan, I wanted to be Jesse Jackson," the Rev. Jamal Bryant, pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in metro Atlanta, tells Axios.
What he said: "Part of what makes America great is the right to fight for your rights," Jackson told Axios' Justin Kaufmann on WGN Radio in 2015. "You can change America. It's like putty. You can reshape it."
Flashback: The civil rights pioneer grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and after college joined King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
- Jackson was known for mobilizing young civil rights activists and organizing marches, taking part in famous events himself, including the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March.
- Jackson quickly became part of King's trusted inner circle. He was talking to King from the hotel courtyard just minutes before he was assassinated in Memphis in 1968.
Friction point: Jackson later butted heads with other civil rights leaders after King's assassination and started his own community outreach organization in Chicago in 1971.
- Operation Rainbow PUSH (now Rainbow PUSH Coalition) is dedicated to improving the economic conditions of Black communities.
In 1972, Jackson helped organize the Los Angeles festival Wattstax — a celebration of Black musicians and entertainers to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the 1965 Watts Rebellion.
- Before 100,000 people at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Jackson gave his famous "I Am Somebody" speech. Excerpts would be used by hip hop artists, from Public Enemy to Jurassic 5.
Zoom out: Jackson was an international mediator throughout his career, including helping to secure hostage releases from Cuba, Iran and Iraq. In 1973, he negotiated the release of an American pilot being held captive in Syria.
- Jackson famously ran for president in 1984 and 1988, becoming the first major Black candidate to mount a nationwide campaign, finishing second to Michael Dukakis in the 1988 Democratic primary.
Zoom in: From his perch in Chicago, Jackson was able to run effective campaigns against racial injustice and inequity, using threats of boycotts against major companies as a tool to fight back.
- In 1982, he led a boycott against Anheuser-Busch over discriminatory hiring practices, and in 1986, he ran a successful boycott campaign against CBS 2 Chicago after it passed over a popular Black anchor for a promotion.
- "Chicago is the best city," Jackson said on WGN in 2015. "It's like a bunch of little cities living together. So we have the burden, which is not always a pleasant one, of trying to convince people of the value of living together and not living apart."
Fun fact: Jackson was one of the two people elected in 1990 as the first "shadow senators" representing Washington, D.C. In this role, he and other "shadow" officials worked to lobby for D.C. statehood but did not have official recognition or congressional power.
In recent years, Jackson hosted cable news shows, appeared on various television and radio shows and helped his sons Jesse Jackson Jr. and Jonathan Jackson win congressional elections, all while running Rainbow PUSH until last year.
- He also played a pivotal role in Barack Obama's presidential campaign in 2008.
- "The night when President Obama was declared the winner, I stood there and cried, in part because we'd won the big one, but also because it was the movement that made it possible," Jackson reflected in 2015.
- "The same place [Grant Park] where there was tear gas in 1968, there was this huge celebration in 2008. That's America at its best, going from deep, deep down to high up. That's America."
Jackson was initially diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2015, but his diagnosis was later revised to a rare neurological disorder called progressive supranuclear palsy. He had been confined to a wheelchair in recent years.
The bottom line: Jackson will go down in history as one of this country's most influential civil rights leaders and is one of the last from the civil rights generation.
Go deeper: The legacy of Rev. Jesse Jackson in Chicago
Editor's note: This story has been updated with a statement from the Jackson family.
