Veteran U.S. civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson, one of the nation’s most influential Black voices, died peacefully on Tuesday, February 17 at the age of 84, his family confirmed in a statement.
Jackson, a Baptist minister, had been a cornerstone of the civil rights movement since the 1960s, a decade in which he famously marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and played a pivotal role in fundraising for the cause.
Jackson’s 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.
Before Barack Obama’s presidency, Jackson was the most prominent African-American candidate to seek the U.S. presidency. He made two significant, though ultimately unsuccessful, attempts to capture the Democratic Party nomination in the 1980s.
