Civil Rights icon Rev. Jesse Jackson dies at 84

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, a protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who led the Civil Rights Movement after his assassination, died on Tuesday. He was 84. His daughter, Santita Jackson, confirmed his passing and said he died at his home in Chicago, surrounded by family.

“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.  “We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family.”

Jackson had been living with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) for more than a decade. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017. Jackson was a Baptist minister and two-time presidential candidate.

In the poem “I am Somebody,” which he often repeated, Jackson sought to reach people of all colors. “I may be poor, but I am Somebody; I may be young; but I am Somebody; I may be on welfare, but I am Somebody,” Jackson intoned. He advocated for the poor and the underrepresented on several issues, including voting rights, job opportunities, education, and health care. He scored diplomatic victories with world leaders, and through his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, he channeled cries for Black pride and self-determination into corporate boardrooms, pressuring executives to make America a more open and equitable society.

 

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Despite health challenges, Jackson continued protesting against racial injustice into the era of Black Lives Matter. In 2024, he appeared at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and at a City Council meeting to show support for a resolution backing a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.

Fellow civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton said his mentor “was not simply a civil rights leader; he was a movement unto himself.”

“He taught me that protest must have purpose, that faith must have feet, and that justice is not seasonal, it is daily work,” Sharpton wrote in a statement, adding that Jackson taught “trying is as important as triumph. That you do not wait for the dream to come true; you work to make it real.”