Civil Rights Activist Jesse Jackson Dies
CHICAGO, IL –The Revered Jesse Jackson is dead. The famed civil rights activist, ordained Baptist minister and former presidential candidate was 84.
His family announced his death overnight, saying he’d passed away peacefully surrounded by loved ones. Jackson had been dealing with a progressive neurodegenerative disease for the past decade.
He ran for the Democratic Party’s nomination for President in 1984 and 1988 and did better than any African American had done until Barack Obama won the nomination in 2008. Jackson started the Rainbow PUSH Coalition in 1996, which was a merging of his two civil rights nonprofits, the National Rainbow Coalition and Operation PUSH.
The South Carolina native began pushing for civil rights as an undergraduate when he marched with Martin Luther King Jr. at Selma, Alabama in 1965.
