WASHINGTON: Veteran United States civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson, one of the nation’s most influential black voices, died peacefully on Tuesday (Feb 17) morning, his family said in a statement. He was 84.
Jackson, a Baptist minister, had been a civil rights leader since the 1960s, when he marched with Martin Luther King Jr and helped fundraise for the cause.
“Our father was a servant leader – not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” Jackson’s family said.
“His unwavering belief in justice, equality, and love uplifted millions, and we ask you to honour his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.”
The family did not release a cause of death, but Jackson revealed in 2017 that he had the degenerative neurological disease Parkinson’s.
He was hospitalised for observation in November in connection with another neurodegenerative condition, according to media reports.
A dynamic orator and a successful mediator in international disputes, the long-time Baptist minister expanded the space for African Americans on the national stage for more than six decades.
He was the most prominent black person to run for the US presidency – with two unsuccessful attempts to capture the Democratic Party nomination in the 1980s – until Barack Obama took the office in 2009.