US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson has died at the age of 84
Jackson died peacefully on Tuesday morning surrounded by his family, they said in a statement.
“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 say
Jackson fought for civil rights alongside martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s and was twice a candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988
A protege of King’s, Jackson built a career around working to politically organise and improve the lives of African-Americans, and became a national force during his two White House campaigns.
He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017 and was hospitalised for observation last November after being diagnosed with a degradative condition.
While other African Americans sought the US presidency, Jackson was the first to find significant success at the ballot box – which would pave the way for those who came after, including Barack Obama and Kamala Harris.
Over the course of his career, Jackson built a movement to bring America’s increasingly diverse population together, with a message that centred on poor and working-class Americans.
A gifted orator, Jackson articulated the frustrations of those who felt like second-class citizens in the world’s most prosperous democracy. His speech to the 1988 Democratic National Convention, which ended with the refrain “keep hope alive”, would be echoed decades later in the “hope and change” slogan of Obama’s successful 2008 presidential campaign.
After his historic run of presidential campaigns, Jackson went on to position himself as an elder statesman within the Democratic Party.
However, Jackson’s later years would be punctuated by scandal, including revelations of marital infidelity and financial impropriety involving his son and political heir, Jesse Jackson Jr, who served as a congressman from Illinois.
Jesse Jackson was a prominent civil rights campaigner who ran twice for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 1984 and 1988.
Born on 8 October 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina, Jackson became involved in politics at an early age.
He rose to prominence in the 1960s as a leader in Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
He was present with King when he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968.
He launched two social justice and activism organisations: Operation PUSH in 1971, and the National Rainbow Coalition a dozen years later.
Jackson remained an activist into later life, pursuing civil rights for disenfranchised groups both in the United States and abroad.
Jesse Jackson’s cause of death has not yet been confirmed, but he was hospitalised in November, and doctors said he’d been diagnosed with a degenerative condition called progressive supranuclear palsy.
In 2017, Jackson announced that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a progressive disorder which affects the brain, nervous system, and muscle control.
Jackson called it a “physical challenge” but continued his civil rights advocacy.
His father, Noah Lewis Robinson Sr, also had Parkinson’s and died of the disease in 1997 at the age of 88.
BBC
