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LAST UPDATE | 14 mins ago
TRIBUTES ARE FLOODING in following the death of reverend Jesse Jackson, the US Civil rights leader and two-time presidential candidate.
In a statement today, the Jackson family said Reverend Jackson, 84, died peacefully Tuesday surrounded by his family. He is survived by his wife Jacqueline and six children.
Jackson was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2017 and also lived with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a rare neurodegenerative disease.
Born in South Carolina, Jackson was active in the civil rights era, participating in demonstrations alongside the Martin Luther King Jr. He also founded the US non-profit Rainbow Push Collective in 1996, an organisation fighting for social change.
Jackson ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in both 1984 and 1988.
In 2000, president Bill Clinton awarded Jackson with the US’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Jackson’s family said his “unwavering commitment” to justice, equality and human rights helped shape a “global movement” for freedom and dignity.
“Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” they said in a statement.
Former Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams led tributes to the civil rights leader, who he has met on several occasions and described as a “good friend” to Ireland.
He said: “I had the great honour and privilege of meeting Jesse Jackson many times in the USA and here in Ireland. He was a fearless and inspirational civil rights leader and a tireless advocate for equality and justice in the USA and elsewhere, including Ireland.”
“Jesse Jackson was a remarkable and compassionate human being who believed in the essential goodness of people.
He said Jackson was a “staunch supporter of the Irish peace process and a defender of the Good Friday Agreement”.
“In 2017 he visited Derry where he opened the newly rebuilt Museum of Free Derry along with Martin McGuinness’s wife Bernie and son Fiachra. He later visited Martin’s graveside.
Former Commissioning Editor of RTÉ Religion & Society, Roger Childs, who interviewed Jackson alongside former Liveline host Joe Duffy in 2011, also paid his respects to the civil rights leader.
“I’m sorry to hear about the death of the Rev. Jesse Jackson,” he said, adding that Jackson gave him a signed poster of Martin Luther King with the message ‘keep hope alive’ at the time.
Jackson was present for many consequential moments in the long battle for racial justice in the US.
He was with King in Memphis in 1968 when the civil rights leader was killed, openly wept in the crowd as Barack Obama celebrated his 2008 presidential election, and stood with George Floyd’s family in 2021 after a court convicted an ex-police officer of the unarmed Black man’s murder.
“My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised,” Jackson told the 1984 Democratic National Convention.
He rose to prominence in the 1960s as a leader in King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
His debut White House campaign supported a massive jobs expansion, ending the nation’s “war on drugs” and its mandatory minimum sentences for drug users, and improving equality for women and minorities.
Four years later, Jackson was back on the convention stage after coming in second to nominee Michael Dukakis, urging Americans to find “common ground.”
“That’s the challenge of our party tonight. Left wing, right wing… It takes two wings to fly,” he said, in a cadence reminiscent of King’s.
Jackson attacked what he called the “reverse Robin Hood” of a Reagan presidency that bestowed riches on the wealthy while leaving poor Americans struggling.
“It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don’t you surrender,” he said as the crowd roared.
While his electric speech raised Jackson’s profile, the nation’s gradual tilt to the right deprived him of major political influence in later years.
With additional reporting from AFP
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