Civil Rights Leader Reverend Jesse Jackson Dead at 84, Family Asks to ‘Honor His Memory’

Reverend Jesse Jackson, an iconic civil rights leader and protegé of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., died on Tuesday, February 17. He was 84.

“It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of Civil Rights leader and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Honorable Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr.,” said a statement from the organization. “He died peacefully on Tuesday morning, surrounded by his family.”

“Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, the overlooked around the world,” the Jackson family added in the statement. “His unwavering belief in justice, equality, and love uplifted millions, and we ask you to honor his memory by continuing to fight for the values he lived by.”

Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina on October 8, 1941. At the time of his birth, his mother, Helen Burns, was 16, while his father, Noah Louis Robinson, was 33 and married to someone else. Jackson was later adopted by his stepfather, Charles Henry Jackson.

As a young man, Jackson excelled in school and at sports, receiving an athletic scholarship to the University of Illinois in 1959. He later transferred to the North Carolina A & T College, a historically black school in Greensboro. There, he became active in the civil rights movement, catching King’s attention.

After graduation, Jackson began studying to become a reverend at the Chicago Theological Seminary. In 1965, he answered Dr. King’s call to march in Selma, Alabama, in support of the Voting Rights Act. While there, he got a job working for King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and soon launched their Operation Breadbasket program in Chicago, which promoted fair hiring practices among retail and consumer goods companies operating in Black communities and encouraged Black-owned businesses.

King praised Operation Breadbasket as SCLC’s “most spectacularly successful program,” adding of Jackson: “We knew he was going to do a good job, but he’s done better than a good job.”

In 1968, Jackson was in the parking lot of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, speaking to King up on the balcony, when the civil rights leader was assassinated.

“I will never forget that scene,” Jackson said. “I play it back in my head so often. I made up my mind even before then but knew that day that I was going to carry out his work.”

He was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1968 and was anointed by the media as “King’s successor,” because of his powerful oratorical skills and activist spirit. He left SCLC in 1971 and formed People United to Save Humanity (PUSH), which promoted boycotts, much like Operation Breadbasket.

In 1984, he ran for president and created the National Rainbow Coalition to address empowerment issues among marginalized groups.

“Dr. King literally laid out a map for economic justice, and no one picked up that baton any better than the Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson Sr.,” Rev. Frederick Haynes III told AARP magazine in 2023.

He ran unsuccessfully for president again in 1988 and then served one term as a shadow delegate to the Senate, representing Washington, D.C. from 1991 to 1997. In 1996, his organizations merged into the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.

During his activist work, Jackson famously popularized the phrase, “I may be poor, but I am somebody,” from Rev. William Holmes Borders Sr.

He later hosted a CNN talk show, Both Sides with Jesse Jackson, from 1992 to 2000, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton in 2000.

He also negotiated to free multiple U.S. hostages held under captivity in countries including Syria, Cuba, Iraq and Serbia.

His mission, he told the Chicago Maroon in 2022, was to “defend, protect, and gain human rights at home and around the world.”

Jackson was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017, and subsequently stepped down from Rainbow/PUSH leadership in 2023, citing his health.

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and the rest will be added upon,” he told the Maroon of his approach to work following his diagnosis. “Do the right thing first, for the right reasons, and the rest follows.”

On Wednesday, November 12, 2025, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition announced that Jackson had been hospitalized for progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a “rare brain disease that affects walking, balance, eye movements and swallowing,” according to the Mayo Clinic.

“He has been managing this neurodegenerative condition for more than a decade,” the organization said in the statement, per CNN. “He was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease; however, last April, his PSP condition was confirmed.”

He is survived by his wife of nearly 63 [wed in 1962] years, Jacqueline, and five children: Santita, 62, Jesse Jr., 60, Jonathan, 59, Yusef, 55, and Jacqueline, 50. He also has a daughter. Ashley, 26, as a result of an extramarital affair.