Four years later, he built on that success by winning 11 primaries and caucuses.<\/p>\n
Jackson\u00a0began his work as an organizer<\/a>\u00a0with the Congress of Racial Equality, participating in marches and sit-ins. He attended North Carolina A&T State University and graduated with a degree in sociology. He began rallying student support for King during his divinity studies at Chicago Theological Seminary and participated in the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march in Alabama.<\/p>\n Shortly afterward, Jackson joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or SCLC, to work alongside King full time. He drew praise from King as a young man running the SCLC\u2019s economic development and empowerment program,\u00a0Operation Breadbasket<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 \u201cwe knew he was going to do a good job, but he\u2019s done better than a good job,\u201d King said.<\/p>\n As he grew as an organizer, Jackson married Jacqueline Brown, who survives him, in 1962. They have five children, including former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill.<\/p>\n Jackson, who was at the motel in Memphis, Tennessee, with King when he was assassinated in 1968, did not let up after King\u2019s death. He took his vision for Black liberation even further by\u00a0founding People United to Save Humanity<\/a>, or PUSH, in 1971. He resigned from the SCLC that year to start PUSH after he was suspended from the organization; he was accused of using the SCLC for personal gain. PUSH worked to improve economic conditions of Black communities in the country and later expanded to politics with direct action campaigns and social areas through a weekly radio show and awards for Black people.<\/p>\n Jackson\u2019s\u00a01984 presidential bid<\/a>\u00a0prompted the launch of his\u00a0National Rainbow Coalition<\/a>, which opposed President Ronald Reagan\u2019s policies and advocated for social programs, voting rights and affirmative action. PUSH and the National Rainbow Coalition merged in 1996 and are now the Rainbow\/PUSH Coalition.<\/p>\n His 1984 campaign angered some Democrats<\/a>\u00a0who said his ideas were too left-leaning and would hurt the party in the general election. Jackson dismissed the concerns.<\/p>\n \u201cThe great responsibility that we have today is to put the poor and the near-poor back on front of the American agenda,\u201d Jackson said of the 1984 campaign in\u00a0a 1996 interview with PBS<\/a>. \u201cThis is a dangerous mission, and yet it\u2019s a necessary mission!\u201d<\/p>\n Jackson\u2019s 1984 campaign was marred when he referred to\u00a0Jewish people as \u201chymies\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and called New York City \u201chymietown\u201d in a Washington Post interview. He initially denied having made the remarks and accused Jewish people of targeting his campaign. He later admitted having used the slur and\u00a0offered an impassioned apology.<\/a><\/p>\n In 1991, Jackson was elected as one of Washington, D.C.\u2019s two \u201cshadow senators\u201d to lobby for D.C. statehood and served one term.<\/p>\n Jackson also helped win the release of several detained and captured Americans around the world.\u00a0In 1999, he negotiated the release of three U.S. soldiers being held in Yugoslavia.<\/a>\u00a0President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for those efforts a year later.<\/p>\n Jackson\u2019s other successes included winning the release of\u00a0a U.S. Navy pilot<\/a>\u00a0in 1984 from Syrian captors after his plane was shot down,\u00a0at least 16 Americans<\/a>\u00a0held in Cuba in 1984,\u00a0700 women and children<\/a>\u00a0from Iraq in 1990 and\u00a0two Gambian Americans<\/a>\u00a0from prison in the West African country in 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the first race, he won more than 18% of the primary vote and a handful of primaries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-473733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Jesse](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/250725-jesse-jackson-obit-2-jg-7d2b40.jpg\")
Jackson shakes hands at the 20th anniversary commemoration of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Freedom March, also known as the “March on Washington.”Bettmann \/ Bettmann Archive<\/p>\n![\"African](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/250725-jesse-jackson-obit-3-jg-796fd7.jpg\")
Jackson announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on Nov. 3, 1983.Bettmann \/ Bettmann Archive<\/p>\n