CHICAGO — The Rev. Jesse Jackson, an iconic civil rights activist who worked with Martin Luther King and spent more than six decades advocating for racial equality, economic justice and voting rights, died Tuesday, his organization announced. 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.,” according to a statement from the organization on Instagram. “He died peacefully on Tuesday morning, surrounded by his family.”
No cause of death was given.
Jackson was hospitalized in November and had been under observation for progressive supranuclear palsy. In 2017, he announced that he had Parkinson’s disease, The New York Times reported.
Jackson rose to national prominence during the 1960s as one of King’s protégés.
Despite his health issues late in life, Jackson continued to actively protest against racial injustice, The Associated Press reported. He appeared at the Democratic National Convention in 2024 to support a resolution for a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas.
He became the first major Black candidate for the presidency, seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination in 1984 and 1988.
One of his signature phrases was “Keep hope alive.”
Jackson was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.
Jackson was born Jesse Louis Burns on Oct. 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, to Helen Burns and her married next-door neighbor, Noah Robinson, the Times reported.
Burns married Charles Jackson in 1943. Charles Jackson did not adopt Jesse for 14 years, and when the couple had a son of their own, the future civil rights leader was sent to live with his grandmother nearby, according to the newspaper.
Jackson graduated from high school in 1959 and enrolled at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on a football scholarship.
He would transfer after his freshman year to North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, the Times reported. There, he met Jacqueline Lavinia Brown, and they were married on New Year’s Eve in 1962.
They had five children together over the next 12 years.
Jackson was 18 when he and seven other men were arrested in 1960 for protesting segregation at the public library in Greenville, USA Today reported.
After graduating from college in 1964, Jackson enrolled at the Chicago Theological Seminary, according to the Times.
He would join King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference movement and was standing only a few feet away when the civil rights leader was assassinated on the balcony of a hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.
In 1984, Jackson negotiated the release of 48 Cuban and Cuban-American prisoners in Cuba, CNN reported. He also worked to free Navy Lt. Robert Goodman, a pilot who was held hostage in Syria.
That same year, Jackson became the second Black candidate from a major party to run for president, following in the footsteps of Shirley Chisholm, the Times reported. He formed the National Rainbow Coalition as a vehicle for a populist campaign.
In 1988, Jackson finished first or second in 16 of the 21 primaries on Super Tuesday but eventually lost the nomination to Michael Dukakis.
0 of 56
©2026 Cox Media Group
