Pathbreaking Civil Rights Leader and Baptist Minister Jesse Jackson Passes at 84: (1941-2026)

With the passing of John Lewis in 2020, Harry Belafonte in 2023, Claudette Colvin in January 2026, there were few Civil Right leaders whose contributions have echoed across decades and social transformations like Jesse Jackson. Now Jackson too has passed leaving us at the age of 84 on February 17, 2026. A protégé of Martin Luther King Jr., Jackson made history himself becoming the first black American to make a serious bid for the White House in 1984 and again in 1988. As the renowned African American writer and intellect James Baldwin aptly noted at the time, Jackson’s run marked a seismic shift in American politics and forced Americans into a bitter confrontation with their deep-seated racism. Indeed, as Baldwin stated, “nothing will ever again be what it was before.”

Jackson was born Jesse Burns in the segregated US South of Greenville, South Carolina to a teenage mother whose ambitions for a singing career were sidelined for a work in a cosmetic shop after her son’s birth. Jackson would eventually inherit his family name from his stepfather, Charles, when he was 15. Jackson recalled childhood struggles that included poverty and bullying, both of which inspired his drive and ambition. Excelling at school and sports, he went on to study at the largely white University of Illinois, but stayed only a year, before transferring to a college in North Carolina. After graduating with a sociology degree he studied at the Chicago Theological Seminary, becoming a Baptist minister. It was in Chicago in 1971 where he would eventually found Operation Push (People United to Save/Serve Humanity) which later evolved into The National Rainbow Coalition in 1984.

Jackson’s Civil Rights activism began in 1960 when he led a group of people to integrate a segregated library in Greenville, an act of civil disobedience for which he was arrested. In 1965, he was a part of the march in Selma, Alabama for African American voting rights. Jackson’s action and resolve so impressed Martin Luther King Jr. that he gave him a job with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. By the following year Jackson was the head of the SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket in Chicago. However, tensions arose between King and Jackson from what King and others viewed as Jackson’s self-promotion. Present in Memphis at King’s assassination, Jackson emerged recounting events that others disputed and left for Chicago (by some accounts prematurely) where he gave interviews wearing a sweater stained with Dr. King’s blood. What was perceived as his undisguised ambition angered some, including Dr. King’s widow, Coretta Scott King.

Jackson took his Civil Rights work to the international stage with travels to South Africa where he showed solidarity with anti-apartheid leaders and to Israel to call for a Palestinian state. Jackson’s role as a US statesman continued tirelessly for decades. It is no exaggeration to say that Jackson helped to kick down the door that Barack Obama was able to walk through on his route to the presidency in 2008. Jackson will be remembered for his decades-long contributions to American and global Civil Rights, and his uniquely passionate, rousing, church-inspired oratory skills that stirred the heart and mind. He is survived by his wife Jackie and his six children.