Civil rights champion Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. dies at 84

BLACK PRESS USA

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a top lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr. whose presidential campaigns set the stage for Barack Obama's ascension to the White House, died Tuesday at age 84. Rev. Jackson, a graduate of North Carolina A&T State University, was born in Greenville, South Carolina.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., whose work as a civil rights champion took root in the Carolinas and led to collaboration with Martin Luther King Jr. and a pair of groundbreaking presidential campaigns, died Tuesday at age 84.

Rev. Jackson was hospitalized at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago on Nov. 12 for observation due to Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, a neurodegenerative disease that was initially mistaken for Parkinson’s, according to a Rainbow/PUSH statement. Because there is no cure, his treatment was focused on alleviating his symptoms.

Public observances will be held in Chicago, with scheduling handled by the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

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

Born Jesse Louis Burns in Greenville, South Carolina, on Oct. 8, 1941, to Helen Burns, he was adopted by Charles Henry Jackson upon their marriage. After attending the University of Illinois for a year on a football scholarship, Rev. Jackson transferred to North Carolina A&T State College (now university) where he became a civil rights activist as a member of the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality. As an A&T freshman in July 1960, he and seven high school students were arrested for walking into the whites-only Greenville County Library in South Carolina to demand its desegregation five months after four A&T students launched the modern sit-in movement in Greensboro. 

“Jesse Louis Jackson now rests with the angels and ancestors. His name in Hebrew means a gift from God because God exists,” Bishop William Barber, founder of Repairers of the Breach said in a statement. “Indeed, Jesse Jackson was a gift from God and a witness that God exists in the ways he cared for and lifted all people, the way he called forth a rainbow coalition of people to challenge economic and social inequality from the pulpit to a historic presidential run, the way he dared to keep hope alive whenever the nation struggled with being who she says she is and yet ought to be. When I was a college student, he was a gift to me as a mentor, and it has been my great privilege to have him walk alongside me through my whole public ministry.

“Now his eternal hope is realized as he takes his place among the ancestors in the presence of God. May we all take up his hope for the America that has never yet been but nevertheless must be.”

Rev. Jackson, who graduated A&T in 1964, by 1965 was active in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. As a student at Chicago Theological Seminary, Rev. Jackson drove to Selma, Alabama, to support King’s voting rights campaign with a group of students in a follow-up march to the “Bloody Sunday” attack against activists.

Rev. Jackson was hired by SCLC to push for civil rights back in Chicago. When King came to Chicago to advocate against discrimination in 1966, Jackson transitioned to SCLC’s economic development and empowerment program, which became Operation Breadbasket. He later became its national leader.

Rev. Jackson was one of King’s top lieutenants and at age 26 was in Memphis working on the Poor People’s Campaign when King was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Rev. Jackson, who was in the courtyard during the shooting, was tasked with calling Coretta Scott King to deliver the news. 

“Those eight or 10 steps to that phone was like a long journey,” he recounted.

In 1971, Rev. Jackson founded Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) an economic advocacy group that encouraged corporations to hire more Black workers and collaborate more with Black entrepreneurs. 

“The Reverend Dr. Jesse Louis Jackson was not simply a civil rights leader; he was a movement unto himself,” the Rev. Al Sharpton in a statement. “He carried history in his footsteps and hope in his voice. One of the greatest honors of my life was learning at his side. He reminded me that faith without action is just noise. He taught me that protest must have purpose, that faith must have feet, and that justice is not seasonal, it is daily work.”

In 1984, Rev. Jackson organized the Rainbow Coalition, a diverse collection of progressive voters that laid the foundation for his groundbreaking presidential campaign in which he earned 3 million votes and won five Democratic primaries despite limiting funding and little support from the national party. He finished third behind former Vice President Walter Mondale and U.S. Sen. Gary Hart.

Rev. Jackson was criticized for remarks made in a private conversation that were regarded as antisemitic as well as his relationship with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. He apologized for the comments but refused to break with Farrakhan.  

Four years later, Rev. Jackson finished second to Michael Dukakis for the Democratic nomination and won the Michigan primary as well as four caucuses while receiving 6.9 million votes. Those campaigns helped lay the groundwork for another Black presidential contender from Illinois – Barack Obama – to win in 2008 and 2012.

“I’m often asked, ‘Jesse, why do you take on these tough issues? They’re not very political. We can’t win that way,’ he told Democrats at the 1988 national convention. “If an issue is morally right, it will eventually be political. It may be political and never be right. Fannie Lou Hamer didn’t have the most votes in Atlantic City, but her principles have outlasted every delegate who voted to lock her out. Rosa Parks did not have the most votes, but she was morally right. Dr. King didn’t have the most votes about the Vietnam War, but he was morally right. If we are principled first, our politics will fall in place.”

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