The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader, Baptist minister and pioneering politician who launched two bids for the U.S. presidency, died on Tuesday morning at the age of 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 family statement said.
“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,” it added.
Jackson is survived by his wife, Jacqueline Jackson, whom he married in 1962, and six children.
Jackson had weathered a myriad of health issues in recent years. In November 2025, Jackson was hospitalized in Chicago for treatment of complications from progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a neurodegenerative condition that he had been managing for a decade, according to a statement from the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the civil rights organization Jackson founded.
“Reverend Jackson is in stable condition and is breathing without the assistance of machines,” the Jackson family said in a statement a few days after Jackson’s hospitalization, in response to speculation about his condition. “Contrary to specific reports, he is not on life support.”
“The Jackson family extends heartfelt appreciation for the many prayers and kind messages offered during this time,” the statement also said. Jackson was released from the hospital the following week.
A further family update on Jackson’s health came in mid-December 2025, when it released a statement saying that Jackson had been released from an acute-care facility where he had “received additional care” following his hospital release. The statement also said Jackson “has battled several infections consistent with the progression of his PSP diagnosis” for “the last several months.”
In 2017, Jackson announced that he’d been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. However, the November 2025 announcement said that the PSP diagnosis had been confirmed the previous April.
Jackson also underwent gall bladder surgery in 2021 and was hospitalized later that year after falling while protesting with students at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He also was hospitalized for COVID-19 that August.
Beginning his career as a protégé of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Jackson quickly rose to become one of the nation’s most prominent and influential civil rights leaders. In 1971, he formed the nonprofit Operation PUSH People United to Save/Serve Humanity to advocate for social and economic parity for Black Americans.
Jackson ran for president twice, both times as a Democrat, placing third for the party’s nomination in 1984 and second in 1988, marking the most successful presidential runs of any Black candidate prior to Barack Obama’s two decades later.
Following his first campaign, Jackson formed the nonprofit National Rainbow Coalition with the stated purpose of affording minority Americans a greater political voice. In 1996, Jackson merged the groups into Rainbow/PUSH, and served as the head of both until 2023.
Jackson was also elected in 1990 as the shadow delegate for the District of Columbia, serving a single term. In 1999, President Bill Clinton awarded Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Jesse Louis Jackson was born Oct. 8, 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina, in the segregated South, and grew up poor in a sharecropping family. He was a gifted student and athlete, graduating from high school with offers for a minor league baseball contract and a Big 10 football scholarship.
He opted instead to attend the University of Illinois before transferring to and graduating from North Carolina A&T, a historically Black university. He then began theological studies before going to work full-time with Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He was ordained a Baptist a minister in 1968.
In 1966, 24-year-old Jackson became head of the Chicago Chapter of the nascent Operation Breadbasket, the economic activism arm of the SCLC, and was appointed its national director the following year. He also helped establish the Chicago Freedom Movement to work for open housing and school desegregation.
Jackson participated in many of the civil rights movement’s landmark moments, including the March on Washington in 1963, where King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and the Selma to Montgomery marches in Alabama in 1965. He was also with Dr. King when the civil rights leader was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.
Reflecting on Dr. King’s memory almost 50 years later, Jackson said he was inspired by his ability to remain undaunted even in the face of overwhelming challenges.
“He is a frame of reference. His resurrection is powerful,” Jackson said in a 2018 interview with ABC Chicago station WLS.
Speaking of King’s assassination, Jackson added, “All I can remember is some voice saying, ‘One bullet cannot kill a movement.’ We must keep going … If your key player is hurt on the field you cannot forfeit the game, you have to internalize your pain and keep marching and keep moving, and we have to be faithful to his charge 50 years later.”
Three years after King’s murder, Jackson left the SCLC and founded Operation PUSH, a social justice organization dedicated to improving the economic conditions of Black communities across the U.S.
The organization fought for greater educational and employment opportunities for Black Americans and was successful in compelling major corporations to adopt affirmative action policies benefiting Black workers.
Jackson’s social activism evolved into political ambition in in the 1980s, when he launched two campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination, in 1984 and 1988. He placed third in primary voting in 1984 and came in second to Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis in 1988, winning 12 primaries and caucuses and receiving some 6.9 million total votes.
As only the second Black American to mount a nationwide presidential campaign, after New York Rep. Shirley Chisholm in 1972, Jackson’s historic runs were the most successful by a Black candidate until President Barack Obama won in 2008.
Jackson ultimately did win political office, when he was elected to serve in the U.S. Senate as a shadow delegate for the District of Columbia, from 1991 to 1997.
Jackson also used his skills as a negotiator to facilitate the freedom of people held abroad, leading to the release of Navy pilot Robert Goodman in 1984 from captivity in Lebanon after his plane was shot down, as well as three American prisoners of war held by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in 1999.
In 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded Jackson a frequent critic of Clinton and his policies the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in recognition of Jackson’s decades of social activism.
“It’s hard to imagine how we could have come as far as we have without the creative power, the keen intellect, the loving heart, and the relentless passion of Jesse Louis Jackson,” Clinton said at the ceremony. “And God isn’t done with him yet.”
Jackson was the recipient of numerous other awards throughout his lifetime, including the NAACP President’s Award and the American Institute for Public Service’s Jefferson Award. In 2021, Jackson received France’s highest order of merit, the Commander of the Legion of Honor.
In later years, Jackson was a vocal proponent for the reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He was also involved in the United Kingdom’s Operation Black Vote to promote minority participation in British elections.
In July 2023, Jackson stepped down as head of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition after more than 50 years as its head. “We’re resigning, we’re not retiring,” Jackson said at the time, vowing to continue fighting for social justice causes.
Jackson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000.
By Patricio Chile and David Brennan ABCNews
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
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