Civil rights icon Reverend Jesse Jackson has died at the age of 84. 

His family said he died peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, on Tuesday morning. A cause of death was not immediately given.

In a statement, the Jackson family said: ‘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 honour his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.’

Fellow civil rights leader Al Sharpton was among the first to pay tribute to the legendary activist.  

He said: ‘The Reverend Dr Jesse Louis Jackson was not simply a civil rights leader; he was a movement unto himself. He carried history in his footsteps and hope in his voice. 

‘One of the greatest honours of my life was learning at his side. He reminded me that faith without action is just noise. He taught me that protest must have purpose, that faith must have feet, and that justice is not seasonal, it is daily work.’

He ended his statement by saying, ‘Rest now, Reverend Jackson. I love you.’ 

Lord Simon Woolley told Sky News that he was ‘heartbroken and crestfallen to have lost a very dear friend and mentor’, adding that he saw Jackson as an ‘icon of social and racial justice.’ 

Born in 1941 in the Jim Crow South, Jackson would go on to become one of the most influential political activists of the late twentieth century.

He led a lifetime of crusades in the United States and abroad, advocating for the poor and underrepresented on issues from voting rights and job opportunities to education and health care.

In 2017, Jackson revealed he had Parkinson’s disease. The towering civil rights leader was treated for the illness as an outpatient at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago for at least two years before he made his diagnosis public.

He was hospitalised for COVID-19 in August 2021, and again in November after he fell and hit his head while helping Howard University students protest poor living conditions on campus.

Jackson had also been managing a condition called progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) for over a decade, a disorder that damages parts of the brain and affects a sufferer’s walking, balance, eye movements and swallowing, in the lead-up to his passing.

He was the son of high school student Helen Burns and Noah Louis Robinson, a married man who lived next door. Rev Jackson was later adopted by Charles Henry Jackson, who married his mother.

He was a star quarterback on the football team at Sterling High School in Greenville and accepted a football scholarship from the University of Illinois.

But after he was reportedly told black people could not play quarterback, he transferred to North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, where he became the first-string quarterback, an honour student in sociology and economics, and student body president.

Arriving on the historically black campus in 1960, just months after students there launched sit-ins at a whites-only diner, Rev Jackson immersed himself in the blossoming civil rights movement.

The civil rights leader rose to prominence as an early disciple of Martin Luther King Jr and became one of the nation’s most recognised civil rights leaders. He also made two groundbreaking, but ultimately unsuccessful, runs for the White House. 

Jackson partook in the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965. Those who saw him there said he did not go unnoticed.

‘He immediately took charge,’ recalled former UN Ambassador Andrew Young, then a top deputy to King. ‘It was almost like he came in and, while people were lining up, he wouldn’t get in line. He would start lining people up.’ 

Jackson called his time with Dr King ‘a phenomenal four years of work’.

He was with Dr King on April 4 1968, when the civil rights leader was killed at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Rev Jackson’s account of the assassination was that Dr King died in his arms.

With his flair for the dramatic,  Jackson wore a turtleneck he said was soaked with Dr King’s blood for two days, including at a King memorial service held by the Chicago City Council, where he said: ‘I come here with a heavy heart because on my chest is the stain of blood from Dr King’s head.’

However, several Dr King aides, including speechwriter Alfred Duckett, questioned whether Jackson could have had the blood on his clothing. There are no images of Rev Jackson in pictures taken shortly after the assassination.

In 1971, he formed Operation PUSH – People United to Save Humanity (later changed to People United to Serve Humanity). The goal was to pursue social justice, civil rights and political activism. ‘It would take him very, very far,’ wrote the New York Times. 

PUSH’s aim was to pressure politicians to improve economic opportunities for black and poor people of all races. Using boycotts (or the threat of them), on white-owned companies, PUSH would win franchises, supply contracts and jobs for many minorities. 

Jackson led successful boycotts against Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, Heublein, Burger King and Seven Up which eventually translated to more minority employment.  

In 1984, Jackson established the Rainbow Coalition, whose mission was to establish equal rights for African Americans, women, and gay people and run programs for housing, social services, and voter registration. The two organisations merged in 1996 to form the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. 

He twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, first in 1984 and again in 1988. 

Jackson resigned from his post as president of Operation PUSH in 1984 to run for president of the United States. 

He was the third African American candidate to do so on a major political party ticket, after Shirley Chisholm sought the Democratic nomination in 1972 and Frederick Douglass received a single roll call vote at the 1888 Republican National Convention. 

Jackson was immediately written off as a fringe candidate, but he took political pundits by surprise when he placed third in the primary, behind Senator Gary Hart and Vice President Walter Mondale. 

In the first race, he won more than 18% of the primary vote and a handful of primaries and caucuses. 

According to a New York Times article published at the time of his second run for the White House, ‘most political analysts give him little chance of being nominated – partly because he is black, partly because of his unretrenched liberalism.’ 

The trailblazing civil rights leader captured 6.9 million votes and won the primary in 11 states. 

Once again. exceeding expectations by doubling his previous results, the New York Times called 1988, ‘the Year of Jackson.’ 

Jackson’s influence extended to international matters in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1983, he travelled to Syria to secure the release of a captured American Navy pilot named Robert Goodman. 

In June 1984, Jackson negotiated the release of 22 Americans being held in Cuba after an invitation by Fidel Castro. 

He caused a sensation when he dragooned the Cuban president into attending church with him on Sunday during his visit. 

On the brink of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Jackson travelled to Iraq to plead with Saddam Hussein for the release of 20 American and British nationals who he was holding hostage as a ‘human shield.’ 

In 1997, Jackson travelled to meet the Kenyan president as President Bill Clinton’s special envoy to promote free and fair elections. 

Two years later, the budding statesman arbitrated the release of three POWs who were captured on the Macedonian border while patrolling with a UN peacekeeping unit. 

The negotiation with the Yugoslavian president, at the height of the Kosovo War, was not sanctioned by Clinton’s administration.  

President Clinton awarded Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000, praising him for his ‘keen intellect and loving hear.’ During the ceremony, Clinton joked: ‘For a chance, I don’t have to follow Jesse Jackson.’  

Despite profound health challenges in his final years, including a rare brain disorder that affected his ability to move and speak, Jackson continued protesting against racial injustice into the era of Black Lives Matter.

In 2024, he appeared at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and at a city council meeting to show support for a resolution backing a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.

‘Even if we win,’ he told marchers in Minneapolis before the officer whose knee kept George Floyd from breathing was convicted of murder, ‘it’s relief, not victory. They’re still killing our people. Stop the violence, save the children. Keep hope alive.’ 

Looking back on his life and legacy, Jackson told The Associated Press in 2011 that he felt blessed to be able to continue the service of other leaders before him and to lay a foundation for those to come.

‘A part of our life’s work was to tear down walls and build bridges, and in a half century of work, we’ve basically torn down walls,’ Rev Jackson said.

‘Sometimes when you tear down walls, you’re scarred by falling debris, but your mission is to open up holes so others behind you can run through.’

In his final months, as he received 24-hour care, he communicated with family and visitors by holding their hands and squeezing.

‘I get very emotional knowing that these speeches belong to the ages now,’ his son, Jesse Jackson Jr, told the AP in October.

Jackson is survived by six children and his wife of more than 60 years, Jacqueline Brown.