Name: Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson dead at age 84
Uploaded: 2026-02-17T17:19:52.000Z
Duration: 10 min 7 s
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Civil rights icon, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, whose towering presence and vision reshaped the Democratic Party and the country, has died at the age of 84.

His family put this statement on Instagram.

Adverbs of manner

Our father was a servant leader, not only to our family, but

to the oppressed, the voiceless and the overlooked around the world.

We ask you to honor his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.

CNN's Abby Phillips has a look at Jesse Jackson's life and legacy.

Jesse Jackson's life was defined by a relentless fight for justice and equality.

I was born in Greenville, South Carolina, in rampant, radical racial segregation.

I had to be taught to go to the back of the bus or be arrested.

Those early experiences drove Jackson to join the civil rights movement.

The fact is, against the odds, we knew there were great odds.

In 1965, he began working for Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

King named Jackson to lead Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, an economic justice campaign for black people.

However, some say King was frustrated by Jackson's brashness and ambition.

Both men were in Memphis in April 1968 to support striking sanitation workers.

King and other civil rights leaders were staying at the Lorraine Motel.

He said, Jesse, you know, you don't even have on a shirt and tie.

I said, doc, it does not require a tie, just an appetite.

It was a defining moment in the history of our struggle.

Years later, Jackson formed Operation Push, pressuring businesses to open up to black workers and customers and adding more focus on black responsibility, championed in the 1972 concert Watts Stacks.

In Watts, we have shifted from burn, baby, burn to Learn, baby, learn.

And he expanded his own global reach, too, helping to free us.

Lieutenant Robert Goodman, who was held by Syria after being shot down, and

later, other Americans held in Cuba and Serbia.

As an African American growing up among white people, you have to negotiate every day.

The reverend set his sights on the White House in 1984.

First thought of as a marginal candidate, Jackson finished third in the primary race with 18% of the vote.

That campaign almost went off the rails when Jackson used an ethnic slur to refer to New York Jews.

He ran again in 1988, this time doubling his vote count and finishing in second in the Democratic race.

At the time, it was the farthest any black candidate had gone in a presidential contest.

But 20 years later, when President Barack ran, we would lay the groundwork for that season.

In 2017, Jackson had a new battle to fight Parkinson's disease.

If you hold on, if your cause is right and your grip is tight, you'll make it.

He was arrested in Washington while demonstrating for voting rights.

His silent presence at the trial of Ahmaud Arbery's killers prompted defense lawyers to ask that he leave the courtroom.

From the Jim Crow south through the turbulent 60s and into the Black Lives Matter movement, Jesse Jackson was a constant, unyielding voice for justice.

She even wrote a book about Jesse Jackson.

Reverend Jackson is survived by his wife Jacqueline, their children, grandchildren and extended family.

Joining us today in the group chat, Jeff Zeleny, CNN chief national affairs correspondent Chuck Rocha, Democratic strategist and former adviser to Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns and Ashley Davis, former White House official under President George W.

You actually just finished reading Abby's book A Dream Deferred.

And we were talking about how Jesse Jackson served as sort of the bridge from Dr.

He was his protege to President Obama to present day.

I mean, he kept fighting till the very end.

And really the towering legacy and figure that Jesse Jackson was is unparalleled in America's 20th century.

Barack Obama would not have been elected as the first black president in America without Jesse Jackson.

Not because they had a close relationship.

But this is why, 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.

Gone are the smoke filled back rooms at party conventions where the candidate was decided.

But Jesse Jackson opened up that process through making it a delegate fight.

And Barack Obama seized upon that in 2007 and 2008 and built a grassroots campaign that was basically the modern day version at the time of what Jesse Jackson did, particularly in 1988.

So he paved the way for that, but so much more.

He literally was the bridge between the two.

But Barack Obama is, I think back to covering him during my time in Chicago.

He moved to Chicago in part because he wanted the black American political experience.

King's assassination and Jesse Jackson was there and he moved to Chicago to start the Rainbow Push coalition.

Really building the broad based modern Democratic Party.

And as Chuck knows well, without Jesse Jackson, a very similar message to what Bernie Sanders did in his campaign in 2016 and 2020, economic justice, really building a broad based coalition.

So the through lines there are so important.

Jesse Jackson's fingerprints are on our politics right now at the moment as well.

And let me build off what Jeff said because it's really, really important because Democrats need to remind themselves today, as we live in the Trump presidency, about what Jesse Jackson did.

He went out as a black man and talked to poor white farmers.

He went out and talked to union members about keeping jobs in America.

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Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson dead at age 84

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