Jesse Jackson, an influential force in the American civil rights movement and protégé to the late Martin Luther King Jr., is dead at 84.
“It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of Civil Rights leader and founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Honorable Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr.,” the Jackson family said in a statement shared on Tuesday (Feb. 17). “He died peacefully on Tuesday morning, surrounded by his family.”
Jackson’s decades of work spanned both activism and politics, including two presidential campaigns.
“His unwavering commitment to justice, equality, and human rights helped shape a global movement for freedom and dignity,” Jackson’s family said Tuesday. “A tireless change agent, he elevated the voices of the voiceless—from his presidential campaigns in the 1980s to mobilizing millions to register to vote—leaving an indelible mark on history.”
Jackson was known for reciting the poem “I Am — Somebody,” with its core message serving as a key element of the activist and ordained minister’s teachings.
“I may be poor, but I am somebody,” he said in a crowd call-and-response version of the poem in 1963, as seen below. “I may be on welfare, but I am somebody. I may be in jail, but I am somebody. I may be uneducated, but I am somebody. I am Black, beautiful, proud. I must be respected. I must be protected. I am somebody.”
Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1941. In college, he became involved in local civil rights activism, a path that quickly led to him working with MLK. Bernice King, MLK and Coretta Scott King’s youngest child, remembered Jackson on Tuesday as “a courageous bridge-builder” who served humanity by “bringing calm into tense rooms and creating pathways where none existed.”
She also shared a photo of Jackson standing alongside her father, writing in the caption that both men were “now ancestors.”
In addition to his years of civil rights-focused activism, Jackson was a frequent and vocal critic of American policies as they pertained to the economic impact of war. In a 1970 interview, seen below, he highlighted the financial impact of the then-active war in Vietnam, particularly on Black citizens.
“It’s obvious that America is overextended in an unwinnable war in Vietnam. … The American economy being a false economy, built more off of wants than off of needs, really did not have the reservoir to adjust to the war,” he said at the time, adding that Black Americans are the “first drafted” and “first to die” in times of war.
In a statement shared Tuesday, Al Sharpton remembered Jackson as “the man who first called me into purpose” when he was just 12 years old.
“The Reverend Dr. Jesse Louis Jackson was not simply a civil rights leader; he was a movement unto himself,” Sharpton added. “He carried history in his footsteps and hope in his voice. One of the greatest honors 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.”
Jackson is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and his six children.
RIP.