We are saddened to report that Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., civil rights leader, Baptist minister, and two-time presidential candidate, has joined the ancestors at the age of 84.
Born in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1941, Jackson grew up during Jim Crow segregation. And yet, instead of succumbing to the world’s desire for him to be small, he pushed back and declared, “I am somebody,” and he spent his entire life making sure the rest of us believed we were somebody, too.
As a young man, Jackson left seminary to join Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma and became a key figure in the movement. He marched and organized with King, and he was beside him in Memphis the day before he was taken from us. After Dr. King was assassinated, Jackson picked up the torch and never put it down.
He built Operation PUSH in Chicago, pressuring corporations to invest in Black communities and showing up at schools across the country to tell young people they mattered. His call-and-response rallying cry, “I am somebody,” was a welcome lifeline for an entire generation that needed to hear it.
In 1984, Jackson became the second Black candidate from a major party to run for president, following Shirley Chisholm’s trailblazing 1972 campaign. His Rainbow Coalition brought together Black, white, Latino, Asian American, Native American, and LGBTQ voters under one roof, proving the power of a multiracial progressive movement. He won five primaries and 3.5 million votes. Four years later, he came back stronger, winning 13 primaries and caucuses and seven million votes. Up until then, no Black candidate had come that close to the nomination.
His reach went well beyond politics. Jackson personally negotiated the freedom of a U.S. Navy pilot held in Syria, secured the release of 48 prisoners in Cuba, helped bring home more than 700 women and children detained in Iraq and Kuwait, and won the release of three American soldiers captured in Yugoslavia. In 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
His campaigns also changed the rules. Jackson pushed the Democratic Party to replace winner-take-all primaries with proportional delegate allocation, a reform that helped clear the path for Barack Obama’s historic 2008 victory. On election night, when Obama addressed the nation from Chicago’s Grant Park, the cameras caught Jackson in the crowd, tears running down his face. It was a full-circle moment to witness the result of decades spent planting those seeds.
According to his family, Jackson passed away peacefully on Tuesday morning, surrounded by his loved ones. A true fighter who spent years battling Parkinson’s disease and progressive supranuclear palsy. He is survived by his five children, including former U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. and current U.S. Representative Jonathan Jackson.
His family’s words say it all: “We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family.”
Because of him, we knew we were somebody, and we will always keep hope alive. May he rest in power.
