Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson dead at 84

Civil-rights leader Jesse Jackson, whose decades of activism, political organizing, and controversy have made him one of the nation’s leading voices for racial justice, died Monday at the age of 84. Jackson ran for president in 1984 and 1988 and was with Dr. Martin Luther King when he was killed in Memphis. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000 and many honorary degrees.
 

“Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed," the Jackson family said in a statement to CNBC early Tuesday morning, "the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world. 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.”

Jackson was hospitalized in November 2025, according to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, which said he was receiving treatment and asked supporters for prayers. He had previously lived with Parkinson’s disease and was later diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy.

Born Oct. 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, to an unwed teen mother. He atended the University of Illinois on an athletic scholarship in 1959 but moved back south to attend A&T College in North Carolina and earned his degree in 1964. He was a college civil rights activist, engaging in sit-ins and protests. He attended the Chicago Theological Seminary after college and engaged in further civil rights work, including organizing a group of students to go to Selma, Alabama to aid Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the local campaign for voting rights. 

Jackson was considered a protégé of King, joining the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and helping lead the fight for civil rights, voting rights, and economic opportunity. In 1971, Jackson founded Operation PUSH, which evolved into the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, building grassroots coalitions, challenging corporate hiring practices, advocating for minority business contracting, and mobilizing voters in urban communities. 

He did not win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 but spoke at the Democratic National Convention, calling for unity in the party and proclaiming "When we do not come together, we never win." He said "When we divide, we cannot win. We must find common ground as a basis for survival and development and change and growth." This notion has been a hallmark of the Democratic Party.



But Jackson’s legacy includes controversies, including antisemitic comments that derailed those campaigns. In one 1984 interview, he used the slur “Hymie” to refer to Jews, saying, “That’s all Hymie wants to talk about is Israel. Every time you go to Hymietown, that’s all they want to talk about.” The backlash led to him publicly apologizing, characterizing the comment as “an off-color remark.” He had previously declared that “Zionism is a poisonous weed that is choking Judaism,” and in statements dating back to the 1970s and 1980s, he had drawn parallels between Israeli policies and the Nazis. Additionally, Jackson never distanced himself from his affiliations with antisemite Louis Farrakhan.

He is survived by his wife of over 60 years, Jacqueline, their 5 children, Santita, Jesse Jr, Jonathan, Yusef, and Jacquiline Jr, and daughter Ashley Jackson with former staffer Karen Stanford.