In finding his words to express how he felt about the passing of Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson Sr. on Tuesday at age 84, his protege, Rev. Al Sharpton, said that his fallen hero “trusted me with responsibility and saw something in me before I fully saw it in myself. That is the measure of a true mentor: they do not just teach you; they name you.
These were part of an outpouring of praise and mourning across the spectrum for Jackson, known first as one of the civil rights successors to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., then as founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, as presidential candidate, diplomat, crusader for economic opportunity, racial justice, and voting rights.
Jackson died peacefully at his Chicago home, his family announced. He had been hospitalized and diagnosed with a severe neurodegenerative condition, progressive supranuclear palsy, and had lived for years with Parkinson’s Disease, which slowed but did not stop his charge, and he refused to let it define him.
“Recognition of the effects of this disease on me has been painful, and I have been slow to grasp the gravity of it,” wrote Jackson in a 2017 statement after learning he had the disease. “For me, a Parkinson’s diagnosis is not a stop sign but rather a signal that I must make lifestyle changes and dedicate myself to physical therapy in hopes of slowing the disease’s progression. … I will continue to try to instill hope in the hopeless, expand our democracy to the disenfranchised, and free innocent prisoners around the world.”
Destined to Lead
Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina, on Oct. 8, 1941. His mother, Helen Burns, was a teenager, and his father, Noah Louis Robinson, was 33. A year after Jackson was born, his mother married Charles Henry Jackson, a postal worker who later adopted him. He was given his stepfather’s name but maintained a relationship with Robinson.
Jackson grew up under the taunts of other children who knew of his birth situation and they fortified him in his defiance of the Jim Crow racism that permeated the South. He attended a racially segregated high school, Sterling, in Greenville, where he was elected student class president, earning letters in baseball, football, and basketball. His accomplishments as an athlete would lead to his acquiring a scholarship to college at the University of Illinois, but his transfer may have come as a result of racism that would not let him perform as quarterback on the football team, though other reasons have also been published for his continuing his education at North Carolina A&T.
Not only did he excel on the gridiron as quarterback at A&T, he was also elected president of the student body. Along with earning a B.S. in sociology, he began his political activism, joining other students in campus protests and in the city. In 1964, he attended the Chicago Theological Seminary and traveled in 1965 with a group of students to Selma, Alabama, to participate in the voting rights demonstrations that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” This gave him the exposure to King that would determine the course of his life.
The two men met after the Selma campaign. Jackson impressed King with his organizing skills, leading him to hire Jackson to work at the Chicago office of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He wound up leaving the seminary after his second year to devote himself full-time to the Civil Rights Movement, principally under the tutelage of the Rev. James Lawson. From there he grew into a crusader for equality and justice and never wavered.
Jackson’s charismatic presence was always prominent in nearly every civic or political event concerning racial justice or civil rights, beginning with his being on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where King was assassinated in 1968. But that did not end his Civil Rights career. Instead he took up King’s mantle. During these years, he also continued his affiliation with SCLC’s Poor People’s Crusade in D.C., establishing an office in Chicago. His relationship with SCLC and Operation Breadbasket ended after several clashes with the Rev. Ralph Abernathy.
Undaunted, Jackson founded Rainbow PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), a merger of two nonprofit organizations in 1971. That was the catalyst for him leading the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s into the Black Identity movement of the 70s. He opened the historic Los Angeles Wattstax music festival in 1972, with his famous “I Am Somebody” speech. That same year, he organized the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, which, at that time, was the largest Black political gathering that had ever taken place, convening numerous political figures that went on to prominent positions in U.S. politics and resulting in the “National Black Agenda.”
In 1984, he founded the Rainbow Coalition, which was an outgrowth of his presidential political campaign. He launched his presidential run to challenge Reaganomics, which, in campaign literature, charged the president with neglecting voting rights, affirmative action, and other social programs. It was at the Democratic National Convention that year in San Francisco that he delivered a speech entitled “The Rainbow Coalition.”
Toward the end of this powerful piece of oration, Jackson said, “Our time has come. Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith. In the end, faith will not disappoint. Our time has come. Our faith, hope, and dreams will prevail. Our time has come. Weeping has endured for nights, but now joy cometh in the morning.”
He finished in third place for the Democratic nomination, trailing former Vice President Walter Mondale and Sen. Gary Hart. Four years later, he was once again on the presidential campaign trail, and though he did very well in the race, winning several states and a number of delegates, he finished behind the runner-up, Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts.
In his 1988 speech, he challenged all who listened to him to be more than what they thought they could be. It became the mantra he was known for by an emerging generation, the children of those who had marched in the Civil Rights years.
“I was born in the slum, but the slum was not born in me. And it wasn’t born in you, and you can make it.
Wherever you are tonight, you can make it. Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don’t you surrender. Suffering breeds character, character breeds faith. In the end faith will not disappoint.
You must not surrender. You may or may not get there but just know that you’re qualified. And you hold on, and hold out. We must never surrender. America will get better and better.
Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive. On tomorrow night and beyond, keep hope alive!”
“Rev. Jackson’s electrifying presidential campaign in 1988 changed the course of history in America,” Dr. Ron Daniels, who served as Jackson’s deputy campaign manager that year, told the Amsterdam News. “Without the change to proportional allocation of delegates in presidential primaries, Barack Obama would not have become the first Black president of the U.S. and the “Jackson bump” in Black registered voters inspired by his campaign were the margin of victory in the historic election of David Dinkins as the first Black Mayor of New York City; two signature achievements directly attributable to the genius of Rev. Jesse L. Jackson.”
In 1991, he moved from Chicago to D.C., where he served as a shadow delegate and senator for D.C. from 1991 to 1997. He also made a mark on the economy by continuing King’s vision for economic equality by founding the Wall Street Project to end a multibillion-dollar trade gap between American businesses and minority vendors. The result was that large corporations committed billions of dollars to the cause of diversity and equality.
His activism never wavered and he was often invited to speak at protests and labor union events, where he lent his voice to political abuse and issues of foreign diplomacy. In 1997, much in the manner of his role in the release of Navy Lt. Robert Goodman, a captured U.S. pilot held in Syria, served as special envoy for President Bill Clinton to Kenya, promoting free and fair elections.
Two years later, he helped to negotiate the release of three prisoners of war in Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. He was again on the diplomatic trail in 2005, this time to Venezuela, to meet with President Hugo Chavez, to tamp down the controversial remarks of televangelist Pat Robertson, who called for Chavez’s assassination. In 2009, he was a keynote speaker at the International Peace Foundation, where the focus was building culture and peace development.
Probably one of the most poignant images in Civil Rights history, however, was the night of Nov. 4, 2008, when Barack Obama, an Illinois senator, was elected President of the United States, the first time a Black person had ever ascended to the office. Cameras caught him in literal tears as Obama gave his victory speech to a crowd of thousands at Chicago’s Grant Park.
“I thought about those who suffered to make it possible,” he told CBS News the next morning. “The marches, the murdered, the martyrs, many who were nameless and faceless, but in some sense their suffering was redeemed last night with that victory.”
Obama, now years out of the White House, acknowledged the impact Jackson had on his career, and that of many, many others.
“Reverend Jackson also created opportunities for generations of African Americans and inspired countless more, including us,” said Obama in a statement. “Michelle got her first glimpse of political organizing at the Jacksons’ kitchen table when she was a teenager. And in his two historic runs for president, he laid the foundation for my own campaign to the highest office of the land.”
Still Moving
Though ailing and barely able to get around as Parkinson’s continued to affect him, Rev. Jackson was still on the ramparts for justice. He had stepped down from his leadership in Rainbow PUSH, leaving it to a new generation of leaders. But he wasn’t done. In 2024, spearheading a summit in his hometown to address the escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza. One of the main issues discussed at the summit was a permanent ceasefire and relief efforts for the badly devastated cities. “We are faith leaders and advocates, united in this moment of moral reckoning to affirm the sanctity of all human life,” Jackson declared.
But probably the most important gift Jackson left was his legacy, which can be seen in the thousands of people inspired by his political campaign to run for office themselves, and in his own family, which has produced two U.S. Congressmen: Jesse Jackson Jr. who served in the House of Representatives for 17 years and Rep. Jonathan Jackson, who currently serves as Representative for Illinois’ 1st Congressional District.
“He was a freedom fighter,” an emotional Jonathan Jackson told Chicago’s WGN. “He fought to make America better. He first got arrested trying to use a public library, but he ran for president…he brought back prisoners of war in Iraq and in Syria…the fight now, it continues. The mantle is now passed for another generation to bring more humane priorities at home.”
Right to his final days, his final breath, the freedom fighter was raising his voice for the oppressed and downtrodden. “We gather to build upon the historical legacy and current global movements for peace, justice, and liberation,” Jackson emphasized, before adding what he said in Lebanon some 40-plus years earlier. “We do not seek to exchange sufferers, but rather to stop suffering.”