And when he declared, \u201cI am Somebody,\u201d in a poem he often repeated, he sought to reach people of all colours. \u201cI may be poor, but I am Somebody; I may be young; but I am Somebody; I may be on welfare, but I am Somebody,\u201d Jackson intoned.<\/p>\n
It was a message he took literally and personally, having risen from obscurity in the segregated South to become America\u2019s best-known civil rights activist since King.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur father was a servant leader \u2014 not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,\u201d the Jackson family said in a statement posted online. \u201cWe shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fellow civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton said his mentor \u201cwas not simply a civil rights leader; he was a movement unto himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe taught me that protest must have purpose, that faith must have feet, and that justice is not seasonal, it is daily work,\u201d Sharpton wrote in a statement, adding that Jackson taught \u201ctrying is as important as triumph. That you do not wait for the dream to come true; you work to make it real.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite profound health challenges in his final years, including the disorder that affected his ability to move and speak, Jackson continued protesting against racial injustice into the era of Black Lives Matter. In 2024, he appeared at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and at a City Council meeting to show support for a resolution backing a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if we win,\u201d he told marchers in Minneapolis before the officer whose knee kept George Floyd from breathing was convicted of murder, \u201cit\u2019s relief, not victory. They\u2019re still killing our people. Stop the violence, save the children. Keep hope alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jesse Jackson rose to prominence alongside Martin Luther King, and spent decades fighting for economic and political rights for African Americans. (Source: Breakfast)<\/p>\n
Calls to action, delivered in a memorable voice<\/p>\n
Jackson\u2019s voice, infused with the stirring cadences and powerful insistence of the Black church, demanded attention. On the campaign trail and elsewhere, he used rhyming and slogans such as “Hope not dope” and “If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, then I can achieve it,” to deliver his messages.<\/p>\n
Jackson had his share of critics, both within and outside of the Black community. Some considered him a grandstander, too eager to seek the spotlight. Looking back on his life and legacy, Jackson told The Associated Press in 2011 that he felt blessed to be able to continue the service of other leaders before him and to lay a foundation for those to come.<\/p>\n
\u201cA part of our life\u2019s work was to tear down walls and build bridges, and in a half century of work, we\u2019ve basically torn down walls,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cSometimes when you tear down walls, you\u2019re scarred by falling debris, but your mission is to open up holes so others behind you can run through.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his final months, as he received 24-hour care, he lost his ability to speak, communicating with family and visitors by holding their hands and squeezing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI get very emotional knowing that these speeches belong to the ages now,\u201d his son, Jesse Jackson Jr., told the AP in October.<\/p>\n
A student athlete drawn to the Civil Rights Movement<\/p>\n
Jesse Louis Jackson was born Oct. 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, the son of high school student Helen Burns and Noah Louis Robinson, a married man who lived next door. Jackson was later adopted by Charles Henry Jackson, who married his mother.<\/p>\n
Jackson was a star quarterback on the football team at Sterling High School in Greenville, and he accepted a football scholarship from the University of Illinois. But after reportedly being told that Black people couldn\u2019t play quarterback, he transferred to North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, where he became the first-string quarterback, an honour student in sociology and economics, and student body president.<\/p>\n
Arriving on the historically Black campus in 1960 just months after students there launched sit-ins at a whites-only lunch counter, Jackson immersed himself in the blossoming Civil Rights Movement.<\/p>\n
By 1965, he joined the voting rights march King led from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. King dispatched him to Chicago to launch Operation Breadbasket, a Southern Christian Leadership Conference effort to pressure companies to hire Black workers.<\/p>\n
Jackson called his time with King \u201ca phenomenal four years of work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jackson was with King on April 4, 1968, when the civil rights leader was slain. Jackson\u2019s account of the assassination was that King died in his arms.<\/p>\n
Sharpton said he \u201calways wondered how much trauma that must have been” for Jackson to witness King\u2019s death. \u201cHe never would talk about it too much, but it drove him,\u201d Sharpton said today. “He said, \u2018We\u2019ve got to keep Dr. King\u2019s legacy alive.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
With his flair for the dramatic, Jackson wore a turtleneck he said was soaked with King\u2019s blood for two days, including at a King memorial service held by the Chicago City Council, where he said: \u201cI come here with a heavy heart because on my chest is the stain of blood from Dr. King\u2019s head.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Civil](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/civil-rights-leader-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-right-and-his-a-YN62N6INABCBXNLS5EQ6RDUEWA.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., right, and his aide Rev. Jesse Jackson are seen in Chicago, Aug. 19, 1966. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
However, several King aides, including speechwriter Alfred Duckett, questioned whether Jackson could have gotten King\u2019s blood on his clothing. There are no images of Jackson in pictures taken shortly after the assassination.<\/p>\n
In 1971, Jackson broke with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to form Operation PUSH, originally named People United to Save Humanity. The organisation based on Chicago\u2019s South Side declared a sweeping mission, from diversifying workforces to registering voters in communities of colour nationwide. Using lawsuits and threats of boycotts, Jackson pressured top corporations to spend millions and publicly commit to hiring more diverse employees.<\/p>\n
The constant campaigns often left his wife, Jacqueline Lavinia Brown, the college sweetheart he married in 1963, taking the lead in raising their five children: Santita Jackson, Yusef DuBois Jackson, Jacqueline Lavinia Jackson Jr., and two future members of Congress, US Rep. Jonathan Luther Jackson and Jesse L. Jackson Jr., who resigned in 2012 but is seeking reelection in the 2026 midterms.<\/p>\n
The elder Jackson, who was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1968 and earned his master’s of divinity degree in 2000, also acknowledged fathering a child, Ashley Jackson, with one of his employees at Rainbow\/PUSH, Karen L. Stanford. He said he understood what it means to be born out of wedlock and supported her emotionally and financially.<\/p>\n
Today, Harold Hall joined other mourners who stopped by the family home to pay their respects.<\/p>\n
Hall, who once lived in the same Chicago neighbourhood as Jackson, left a bouquet of flowers outside Jackson\u2019s door and recalled that he helped local street organisations in the late 1960s and early 1970s.<\/p>\n
Jackson \u201cwould come out and shoot ball and try to change the minds of many of our young folk,” urging them to stay out of trouble, Hall told reporters. \u201cAnd in many instances, it happened. It worked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Presidential aspirations fall short but help \u2018keep hope alive\u2019<\/p>\n
Despite once telling a Black audience he would not run for president \u201cbecause white people are incapable of appreciating me,\u201d Jackson ran twice and did better than any Black politician had before President Barack Obama, winning 13 primaries and caucuses for the Democratic nomination in 1988, four years after his first failed attempt.<\/p>\n
His successes left supporters chanting another Jackson slogan, \u201cKeep hope alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was able to run for the presidency twice and redefine what was possible; it raised the lid for women and other people of colour,\u201d he told the AP. \u201cPart of my job was to sow seeds of the possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
US Rep. John Lewis said during a 1988 C-SPAN interview that Jackson\u2019s two runs for the Democratic nomination \u201copened some doors that some minority person will be able to walk through and become president”.<\/p>\n
Jackson also pushed for cultural change, joining calls by NAACP members and other movement leaders in the late 1980s to identify Black people in the United States as African Americans.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be called African Americans has cultural integrity \u2014 it puts us in our proper historical context,\u201d Jackson said at the time. \u201cEvery ethnic group in this country has a reference to some base, some historical cultural base. African Americans have hit that level of cultural maturity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jackson\u2019s words sometimes got him in trouble.<\/p>\n
In 1984, he apologised for what he thought were private comments to a reporter in which he called New York City \u201cHymietown,\u201d a derogatory reference to its large Jewish population. And in 2008, he made headlines when he complained that Obama was \u201ctalking down to Black people\u201d in comments captured by a microphone he didn\u2019t know was on during a break in a television taping.<\/p>\n
Still, when Jackson joined the jubilant crowd in Chicago\u2019s Grant Park to greet Obama that election night, he had tears streaming down his face.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish for a moment that Dr. King or (slain civil rights leader) Medgar Evers … could\u2019ve just been there for 30 seconds to see the fruits of their labour,\u201d he told the AP years later. \u201cI became overwhelmed. It was the joy and the journey.\u201d<\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including new footage of a dramatic Sail GP collision, and the best time to book your next holiday. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
Exerting influence on events at home and abroad<\/p>\n
Jackson also had influence abroad, meeting world leaders and scoring diplomatic victories, including the release of Navy Lt. Robert Goodman from Syria in 1984, as well as the 1990 release of more than 700 foreign women and children held after Iraq\u2019s invasion of Kuwait. In 1999, he won the freedom of three Americans imprisoned by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.<\/p>\n
In 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country\u2019s highest civilian honour.<\/p>\n
“Citizens have the right to do something or do nothing,\u201d Jackson said, before heading to Syria. \u201cWe choose to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2021, Jackson joined the parents of Ahmaud Arbery inside the Georgia courtroom where three white men were convicted of killing the young Black jogger. In 2022, he hand-delivered a letter to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in Chicago, calling for federal charges against former Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke in the 2014 killing of Black teenager Laquan McDonald.<\/p>\n
Jackson, who stepped down as president of Rainbow\/PUSH in July 2023, disclosed in 2017 that he had sought treatment for Parkinson\u2019s, but he continued to make public appearances even as the disease made it more difficult for listeners to understand him. Last year, doctors confirmed a diagnosis of progressive supranuclear palsy, a life-threatening neurological disorder. He was admitted to a hospital in November for nearly two weeks.<\/p>\n
During the coronavirus pandemic, he and his wife survived being hospitalised with Covid-19. Jackson was vaccinated early, urging Black people in particular to get protected, given their higher risks for bad outcomes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s America\u2019s unfinished business \u2014 we\u2019re free, but not equal,\u201d Jackson told the AP. \u201cThere\u2019s a reality check that has been brought by the coronavirus, that exposes the weakness and the opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, a protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and two-time presidential candidate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,64,550,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-289051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-north-america","11":"tag-social-issues","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}