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By Rodrigo Santos Andrade
Rev. Jesse Jackson, civil rights icon, dies age 84
visibility comment0 event February 17, 2026 timer 08:40
INFLUENTIAL civil rights activist Jesse Jackson has died aged 84.
The Baptist minister and two-time presidential candidate passed away peacefully this morning “surrounded by family“.
“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 in a statement.
“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.”
Jackson revealed that he had Parkinson’s in 2017 and had been treated at a Chicago outpatient facility for at least two years prior to making the diagnosis public.
At the time, fellow civil rights icon Al Sharpton reflected on Jackson’s impact on American politics.
“As I watched him, I thought about the greatness of this man,” he said.
“How he continued Martin Luther King’s movement for justice, how he cemented it in the North and made the King movement truly national.
“He changed the nation. He served in ways he never got credit. No one in our lifetime served longer and stronger.
“We pray for him, because he’s given his life for us.”
Jackson was a key – but sometimes divisive – figure in the American civil rights movement across seven decades.
He successfully combined tub-thumping Christian sermons with the long fight for justice for blacks denied a slice of the American Dream.
But he twice failed in bids to become the first black US President, his career was littered with controversy, and his personal morals were repeatedly questioned.
He sparked controversy in 1984 when he described New York with a derogatory term to Jewish people.
Jackson had a history of provocative statements regarding Jewish people and Israel with hampered his candidacy bids.
Opponents, including some fellow black campaigners, regarded him as an over-ambitious chancer while his supporters believed he was close to sainthood.
Jesse Louis Jackson was illegitimately born in Greenville, South Carolina, in October 1941 to 16-year-old schoolgirl Helen Burns and her much older married neighbour Noah.
Read more: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/38246855/jesse-jackson-civil-rights-icon-dies-family-tribute/
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