The Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson, the civil rights leader whose eloquent preaching and national political campaigns reshaped the Democratic Party and expanded the boundaries of American public life, died on Tuesday at 84, his family and the Rainbow PUSH Coalition said.
He was surrounded by family members at the time of his death.
Jackson, a protégé of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., rose from the segregated South to become one of the most prominent voices for racial justice in the United States.
He remained active in public life for more than five decades, advocating for marginalized communities at home and abroad.
“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 a statement.
Born on October 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, Jackson grew up during the Jim Crow era.
He became involved in civil rights activism as a college student and was arrested for attempting to enter a whites-only public library.
Ordained as a Baptist minister in 1968, he worked closely with King and was in Memphis when King was assassinated.
In the years that followed, Jackson founded Operation PUSH and later the National Rainbow Coalition, organizations that broadened the civil rights agenda to include women’s rights and gay rights.
His activism extended internationally, as he negotiated the release of Americans held in Syria, Cuba, Iraq and Serbia.
He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000.
Jackson mounted two bids for the Democratic presidential nomination, in 1984 and 1988, winning millions of votes and multiple state contests.
Though he fell short of securing the nomination, his campaigns mobilized Black voters and built a multiracial coalition that influenced future Democratic politics.
“America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth,” Jackson said during the 1988 Democratic National Convention.
He later described himself as “a trailblazer” and “a pathfinder,” reflecting on barriers he confronted as a Black candidate.
Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017, Jackson continued advocating for voting rights and criminal justice reform.
He stepped down as president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition in 2023.
He is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and six children.