Jesse Jackson, longtime civil rights leader and presidential candidate, has died

The civil rights leader died "peacefully on Tuesday morning, surrounded by his family."

AFGE leaders and staffers meet with the Rev. Jesse Jackson to discuss coalition building. Wikimedia Commons.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a towering civil rights leader and two-time presidential candidate, has died. He was 84.

“It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of Civil Rights leader and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Honorable Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr.,” his family said in a statement. “He died peacefully on Tuesday morning, surrounded by his family.”

Jackson was hospitalized in November, where he was under observation for a rare brain disease known as progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP).

Jackson was born in segregated Greenville, South Carolina, where he would later stage a sit-in at a local library that refused to allow him to check out a book. He attended North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College, where he pledged Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc, played football and became student body president.

He was drawn to the civil rights work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, joining the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Following King’s assassination, Jackson founded the Chicago-based civil rights organization Operation PUSH.

Jackson’s two presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988 upended the notion that a Black political candidate couldn’t make a serious run for president.

“Because Jesse Jackson, through his 1984 bid for president and 1988 candidacy for president, he literally changed the Democratic Party and changed the way Democrats elect their presidents,” CNN’s Jeff Zeleny said of Jackson.

He was the first presidential candidate whose campaign platform supported for LGBTQ+ rights, called for defunding militarism, and ending apartheid.

Tributes honoring the life of the late Baptist minister poured in.

“Today, I lost the man who first called me into purpose when I was just twelve years old. And our nation lost one of its greatest moral voices. The Reverend Dr. Jesse Louis Jackson was not simply a civil rights leader; he was a movement unto himself,” The Rev. Al Sharpton said in a social media post.

Bernice King, the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, wrote that her “family shares a long and meaningful history” with Jackson.

“Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. devoted his life to lifting people in poverty, the marginalized, and those pushed to society’s edges,” she wrote on Facebook. “Through Operation PUSH, he pushed barriers and opened doors so Black people and other excluded communities could step into opportunity and dignity.”

This story will be updated.