Rev. Jesse Jackson, Civil Rights Leader and Two-Time Candidate, Dies at 84

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, died Tuesday at 84, his family said. “Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” the family said in a statement quoted by NPR and NBC News. Al Jazeera reported that he “died peacefully”; NBC said a cause of death was not immediately given, and the family said public observances will be held in Chicago.

Jackson was born Oct. 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, according to Al Jazeera and NPR. He attended North Carolina A&T, where Al Jazeera said he studied sociology, joined the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery marches, and later worked with King in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, running its economic program, Operation Breadbasket, NBC reported. He was at the motel in Memphis with King when King was assassinated in 1968. In 1971 he founded Operation PUSH; his 1984 campaign led to the launch of his National Rainbow Coalition, and the two groups merged in 1996, according to NBC News and France 24.

He ran for president in 1984 and 1988. In 1984 he finished third in the Democratic primaries, behind Walter Mondale and Gary Hart, and became the most successful Black presidential candidate until Barack Obama, France 24 and NPR reported. NBC said he won more than 18 percent of the primary vote that year. In 1988 he ran again and finished second to Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis; NBC counted 11 primaries and caucuses won, and NPR said he was the first African American to win major presidential primaries. Even after losing, NPR wrote, he stayed a powerful player in the party and pushed it to adopt a platform that recognized issues important to Black voters.

In the 1990s he served as President Bill Clinton’s special envoy for Africa, Al Jazeera and France 24 reported. He also negotiated the release of Americans held abroad; Al Jazeera and France 24 said his missions took him to Syria, Iraq and Serbia. NBC listed a Navy pilot freed from Syrian captors in 1984, Americans held in Cuba that year, 700 women and children from Iraq in 1990, and three U.S. soldiers held in Yugoslavia in 1999. Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000, NBC and NPR said. He announced in 2017 that he had Parkinson’s disease. According to NBC, his Rainbow PUSH Coalition said he had been living for more than a decade with progressive supranuclear palsy and was admitted to a hospital in November.

His career had controversies. During the 1984 campaign he referred to New York City as “Hymietown,” a slur against Jews, according to France 24 and NBC News; NBC said he first denied it and later admitted it and apologized. Al Jazeera and NPR reported that he also cut ties with or distanced himself from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. His son, former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., pleaded guilty in 2013 to taking about $750,000 in campaign money for personal use and served prison time, France 24 and NPR said.

Tributes came from across the political spectrum. President Trump paid tribute in a post on Truth Social, NBC News and France 24 reported. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Jackson “a legendary voice for the voiceless,” and the Rev. Al Sharpton said “our nation lost one of its greatest moral voices,” NBC reported. Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama said his activism “laid the foundation” for Obama’s presidential campaign, according to NBC.