{"id":169016,"date":"2026-02-18T02:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T02:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/169016\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T02:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T02:04:09","slug":"jesse-jackson-civil-rights-leader-who-rallied-in-austin-dies-at-84","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/169016\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesse Jackson, civil rights leader who rallied in Austin, dies at 84"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a highly-influential political civil rights activist, former presidential candidate and friend and partner of Martin Luther King Jr., has died at 84.<\/a><\/p>\n

Jackson’s activist work started in 1960, when he fought to desegregate a library<\/a> in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. A few years later, King tapped Jackson to lead Operation Breadbasket, a movement to improve economic conditions for Black Americans.<\/p>\n

Jackson’s role in advancing the civil rights movement continued after King\u2019s assassination. He created the Rainbow PUSH Coalition (People United to Save Humanity) \u2014 a nonprofit civil rights organization based in Chicago.<\/p>\n

His work frequently brought him to Austin, including speaking to former Rep. Barbara Jordan’s class at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of the LBJ Library\/Eric Draper<\/p>\n

Rev. Jesse Jackson, far right, talks with former President George W. Bush, center, at the LBJ Presidential Library during the Civil Rights Summit on April 10, 2014.<\/p>\n

In the mid-1990s, Jackson led a march to the Texas Capitol to protest attempts from state and federal leaders to eliminate affirmative action, according to newspaper archives from the Austin American-Statesman. The rally took place less than a year before affirmative action for Black and Mexican American students was effectively banned at the University of Texas at Austin\u2019s School of Law in the case of Hopwood v. Texas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jackson continued advocating for affirmative action in Austin into the 2000s. He delivered speeches to thousands of Austin residents at Waterloo Park, Huston-Tillotson University and hosted youth voting rallies at local high schools. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy LBJ Library\/Frank Wolfe<\/p>\n

Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks at an event a the LBJ Library on Sept. 18, 1992.<\/p>\n

In fall of 2003, Jackson sat down with the Austin Police Department to discuss repairing its relationship with the Black community after Jessie Owens, a 20-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by a white police officer.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Jackson rallied alongside Willie Nelson, Beto O\u2019 Rourke, and other Texas leaders in a four-day long protest against the Legislature\u2019s attempts to suppress voting rights in the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a highly-influential political civil rights activist, former presidential candidate and friend and partner of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,4981,68288,54020,68477,68478,68480,68479],"class_list":{"0":"post-169016","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news","11":"tag-civil-rights-movement","12":"tag-jesse-jackson","13":"tag-mlk-jr","14":"tag-rainbow-push-coalition","15":"tag-what-is-the-rainbow-push-coalition","16":"tag-where-was-jesse-jackson-from","17":"tag-who-was-jesse-jackson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}