Rev. Jesse Jackson, Voice of the Voiceless, dies at 84
Civil rights titan, Baptist minister, and two-time presidential candidate dies peacefully surrounded by family on Tuesday morning.
The Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson Sr., civil rights colossus, ordained Baptist minister, founder of Rainbow PUSH Coalition, and one of the most recognizable voices for justice in American history — has gone home to Glory. He was 84 years old. The Jackson family confirmed Tuesday morning that he passed peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, bringing to a close a life that spanned seven decades of prophetic, sacrificial service to the oppressed, the overlooked, and the forgotten.
For the faith community, and for the millions who found in Rev. Jackson’s voice the sound of hope when hope seemed impossibly distant, today is a day of both mourning and deep, abiding gratitude. A giant has fallen — and the earth beneath his legacy is holy ground.
Statement from the Jackson Family
“Our father was a servant leader, not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world. 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.”
Jesse Louis Jackson was born on October 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina. A child of the Jim Crow South who grew up navigating segregated water fountains, back-of-the-bus mandates, and white-only libraries. These early wounds did not break him. They built him. By high school he was class president, a three-sport letterman, and a young man already burning with a fire that no system of oppression could extinguish.
He transferred to North Carolina A&T University, a historically Black institution in Greensboro, where he played quarterback and served as student body president while participating in sit-in protests against segregated lunch counters and theaters. It was there the preacher and the activist merged — irreversibly, beautifully — into the man the world would come to know.
“Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow — red, yellow, brown, Black and White — and we’re all precious in God’s sight.”
— Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr.
No biography of Jesse Jackson can be told apart from that April evening in Memphis. He was present at the Lorraine Motel when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 —
