Updates: Jesse Jackson, Civil Rights Leader, Dies at 84
His family said in a statement that Mr. Jackson “died peacefully,” but did not give a cause. He was hospitalized in November for treatment of a rare neurodegenerative condition.
Here’s more on his life.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, America’s most influential Black figure in the years between the civil rights crusades of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the election of Barack Obama, died on Tuesday. He was 84.
His death was confirmed by his family in a statement, which said that Mr. Jackson “died peacefully,” but did not give a cause.
“His unwavering commitment to justice, equality, and human rights helped shape a global movement for freedom and dignity,” the statement said.
Mr. Jackson was hospitalized in November for treatment of a rare and particularly severe neurodegenerative condition, progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), according to the advocacy organization he founded, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. In 2017, he said that he had Parkinson’s disease, which in its early stages can produce similar effects on bodily movements and speech.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader, described Mr. Jackson as his mentor and said that he had prayed over the phone with Mr. Jackson’s family. “He was a consequential and transformative leader who changed this nation and the world,” Mr. Sharpton said in a statement posted on social media.
Mr. Jackson, who was celebrated for his impassioned oratory and populist vision of a “rainbow coalition” of the poor and forgotten, picked up the mantle of Dr. King after his assassination in 1968. He ran for president twice, long before Mr. Obama’s election in 2008, but he never achieved either the commanding moral stature of Dr. King or the ultimate political triumph attained by Mr. Obama.
Through the power of his language and his preternatural energy and ambition, Mr. Jackson became a moral and political force in a racially ambiguous era, when Jim Crow was still a vivid memory and Black political power more an aspiration than a reality.
With his gospel of seeking common ground, his pleas to “keep hope alive” and his demands for respect for those seldom accorded it, Mr. Jackson, particularly in his galvanizing speeches at the Democratic conventions in 1984 and 1988, enunciated a progressive vision that defined the soul of the Democratic Party, if not necessarily its policies, in the last decades of the 20th century.
Mr. Jackson’s survivors include his wife, Jacqueline; his children, Jesse Jr., Santita, Jonathan, Yusef, Jacqueline and Ashley; and a number of grandchildren.
Here’s what else to know.
Scene in Chicago: News media crews were camped outside the Jackson family home on the South Side early Tuesday. Local news channels canceled regular programming, instead playing archival footage of Mr. Jackson’s speeches over the decades.
Pivotal moments: Mr. Jackson’s life ran in parallel to the successes of the civil rights era, but it was at the movement’s lowest moment that he came to wider national attention: the 1968 assassination of Dr. King. Read more ›
Family tribute: In the statement announcing his death, Mr. Jackson’s family said he was a “tireless change agent,” who “elevated the voices of the voiceless.” Read more ›
Life in pictures: Mr. Jackson spent more than six decades in the public eye. Read more ›
Julie Bosman contributed reporting."
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