USA US civil rights activist Jesse Jackson is dead
The US civil rights activist Jesse Jackson is dead. He died peacefully surrounded by his family on Tuesday morning, the Rainbow Push Coalition foundation he founded announced in a statement, citing his family.
17.02.2026, 12:03
SDA
Jackson, who fought for equal rights in the USA alongside Martin Luther King in the 1960s, was 84 years old.
"His unwavering commitment to justice, equality and human rights helped shape a global movement for freedom and dignity," the statement reads. "Our father was a servant leader - not just for our family, but for the oppressed, the voiceless and the overlooked around the world."
For decades, Jesse Jackson was one of the most prominent civil rights activists in the USA. He made headlines around the world with his bids for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
One of the best-known African-American voices
Jackson was born Jesse Louis Burns in Greenville in the southern US state of South Carolina in 1941 and later took the surname of his stepfather Charles Jackson. Jesse Jackson was studying theology in Chicago when he began working with the legendary civil rights activist King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Jackson was with Martin Luther King in Memphis when he was assassinated in 1968. He later founded his own organizations, which merged into the "Rainbow Coalition" in 1996 - an initiative that, by its own admission, is "committed to social change".
In the 70s, Jackson was named one of the hundred most influential black Americans by Ebony magazine. In the following decade, the Baptist minister became one of the best-known African-American politicians. Jackson married his college sweetheart Jacqueline Lavinia Brown in 1963; the couple have five children. Jackson's health had not been particularly good for years. In 2017, for example, he announced that he was suffering from Parkinson's disease. During the coronavirus pandemic, he and his wife had to be treated in hospital after being infected in August 2021.
