Rev. Jesse Jackson, the longtime civil rights activist, Baptist minister and two-time presidential candidate, died Tuesday at age 84, his family said in a statement.
“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. “We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family. His unwavering belief in justice, equality, and love uplifted millions, and we ask you to honor his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.”
A cause of death was not immediately given. His family said he died peacefully surrounded by his loved ones.
He was admitted to a hospital in November and had been living for more than a decade with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), according to his Rainbow PUSH Coalition, which affects patients’ ability to walk and swallow and can lead to dangerous complications.
Jackson became involved in politics at an early age. He rose to prominence in the 1960s as a leader in Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
He was present with King when he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968.
He launched two social justice and activism organisations: Operation PUSH in 1971, and the National Rainbow Coalition a dozen years later.
Jackson remained an activist into later life, pursuing civil rights for disenfranchised groups both in the United States and abroad.
