jesse jackson: US civil rights leader dies aged 84
Jesse Jackson, a towering figure in the American civil rights movement who twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination and founded the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, has died at the age of 84. His family said he passed away peacefully on Tuesday morning, surrounded by relatives. Jackson had been living with a rare degenerative condition that was diagnosed in April 2025.
Legacy of activism and political influence
Born in 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina, Jackson rose to national prominence in the 1960s as a leader in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and as an ally of Martin Luther King Jr. He later built a broad-based movement focused on poor and working-class Americans, expanding outreach to Black, Latino, Asian and low-income white communities. His campaigns and organising were credited with registering millions of voters and elevating the concerns of communities long sidelined by power.
Jackson twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s, campaigns that broke new ground in building multiracial coalitions and bringing issues of economic justice to the fore. Those runs are widely acknowledged to have opened political space for a new generation of leaders who followed.
Private diplomacy and high-profile interventions
Beyond domestic organising, Jackson carried out a string of high-profile interventions abroad, using what his supporters called private diplomacy to secure releases and press for humanitarian outcomes. His efforts included the 1984 release of an American pilot held in the Middle East, the freeing of dozens of US citizens detained in Cuba, and negotiations that helped secure the release of US service members from captivity in 1999 during the conflict in the Balkans.
Those missions sometimes drew criticism from government officials who warned against private engagements, yet Jackson persisted, arguing that a failure of diplomacy and communication was often at the heart of humanitarian crises. For many Americans whose loved ones were affected, his interventions were credited with saving lives and forcing attention where official channels had stalled.
Illness, family and tributes
Jackson's family said he remained steadfast in his commitments until the end, and noted his role as founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a non-profit organisation devoted to social justice and civil rights. He is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and their children Santita, Jesse Jr, Jonathan, Yusef, Jacqueline and Ashley.
Doctors had revised an earlier Parkinson's diagnosis and said Jackson had progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare degenerative condition that affects movement and balance. He was admitted to hospital in November and had received the PSP diagnosis in April 2025.
Tributes poured in from across the political spectrum. A former president called Jackson "a true giant, " noting that Jackson's two presidential bids laid groundwork for later campaigns and that Jackson created opportunities for generations of African Americans. Other national figures praised his decades of organising—from boycotts and sit-ins to mass voter registration drives—and his insistence that dignity and equal treatment are fundamental rights.
Jackson leaves a complicated and consequential legacy: a mix of street-level organising, national politics and international negotiation. For more than six decades he helped shape movements for civil rights and social justice, and he will be remembered both for the causes he championed and the lives he touched along the way.
