Civil Rights Leader Jesse Jackson Dies
Reactions are pouring in following the death of Reverend Jesse Jackson, a pivotal civil rights leader. His son, Representative Jonathan Jackson, gave an emotional tribute, calling his father his hero. Rev. Jackson rose to prominence as a key figure in the civil rights movement following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
- Rev. Jackson died at the age of 84 after battling progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare neurological disorder, having been initially diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2017. - He was on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis with Martin Luther King Jr. when King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. - Jackson's two campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 were the most successful for an African American until Barack Obama. In 1988, he garnered nearly 7 million votes and won 11 primaries and caucuses. - He founded two major organizations that later merged: Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity) in 1971 and the National Rainbow Coalition in 1984. The combined Rainbow PUSH Coalition, based in Chicago, advocates for social justice and civil rights. - Acting as an international diplomat, he negotiated the release of a captured U.S. Navy pilot from Syria in 1984, 48 prisoners from Cuba in 1984, "human shields" from Iraq in 1990, and U.S. soldiers from Kosovo in 1999. - His early activism included leading a "read-in" protest at the segregated public library in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina, in 1960, which resulted in his first arrest. - Two of his five children have held public office; his son Jesse Jackson Jr. is a former U.S. Congressman from Illinois, and his son Jonathan Jackson was elected to Congress in 2022. - In 1991, he was elected as a "shadow senator" for the District of Columbia, a position he used to advocate for D.C. statehood.
