Charismatic US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, an eloquent Baptist minister raised in the segregated South who became a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr and twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, has died at age 84, his family said in a statement yesterday.
“Our father was a servant leader – not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” the Jackson family said.
Jackson, an inspirational orator and long-time Chicagoan, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017.
The media-savvy Jackson advocated for the rights of Black Americans and other marginalised communities dating back to the turbulent civil rights movement of the 1960s spearheaded by his mentor King, a Baptist minister and towering social activist.
Jackson weathered a spate of controversies but remained America’s pre-eminent civil rights figure for decades.
He ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, attracting Black voters and many white liberals in mounting unexpectedly strong campaigns but fell short of becoming the first Black major party White House nominee. Ultimately, he never held elective office.
Jackson founded the Chicago-based civil rights groups Operation PUSH and the National Rainbow Coalition and served as Democratic President Bill Clinton’s special envoy to Africa in the 1990s. Jackson also was instrumental in securing the release of a number of Americans and others held overseas in places including Syria, Cuba, Iraq and Serbia.
Jackson pursued his political ambitions in the 1980s, relying on his mesmerising oratory. It was not until fellow Chicagoan Barack Obama’s election as president in 2008 that a Black candidate came as close to securing a major party presidential nomination as Jackson.
In 1984, Jackson won 3.3 million votes in Democratic nominating contests, about 18 per cent of those cast, and finished third behind eventual nominee Walter Mondale and Gary Hart in the race for the right to face Republican incumbent Ronald Reagan.
In 1988, Jackson was a more polished and mainstream candidate, coming in a close second in the Democratic race to face Republican George H W Bush. Jackson gave eventual Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis a run for his money, winning 11 state primaries and caucuses, including several in the South, and amassing 6.8m votes in nominating contests, or 29pc.
Jackson cast himself as a barrier-breaker for people of colour, the impoverished and the powerless.
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