In the early hours of Tuesday, February 17, 2026, the Reverend Jesse Jackson left us at the age of 84. No one can claim shock at receiving the news, due to Jackson’s advanced years and the numerous health difficulties that beset him in the last decades of his life. And yet, his taking leave of us has an unusual reverberation. In my lifetime, America has had few spokespersons for progressive values as effective as Rev. Jackson. For those of us born after 1970, he was a vital and singular link to a bygone era. He served as a bridge between the Civil Rights Movement, which feels like a lost Age of Heroes to those of us born after, and the end of the American Century.
The photographs taken just seconds before the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 at the Lorraine Motel depict King standing between the young Jackson and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Sr. (1926-1990); the mise-en-scène of those photos would prove to be fateful. Jackson was famously one of King’s proteges, while Abernathy (two years older than King) was his trusted lieutenant. King’s assassination rudely ended his apprenticeship as a civil rights activist. Jackson, who was soon after ordained a Baptist minister, was the national director of Operation Breadbasket, an organization dedicated to economic empowerment of Black families, which was part of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
King’s death meant Rev. Abernathy was now in charge of the SCLC, and Jackson and Abernathy clashed. By the end of 1971, the Shakespearean power struggle between the ascendant Jackson and the waning Abernathy came to a head. Jackson left to start his own organization, Operation PUSH. And the stage was set for the young minister to come into his own.
Born in Greenville, South Carolina, to Helen Burns (18 years old when she gave birth) and Noah Robinson (he was Burns’ married neighbor, aged 33 when their child was born), Jackson took the name of his stepfather, Charles Jackson, who married Burns one year after she gave birth and adopted her child. There’s some evidence Jackson was teased by other kids regarding his parentage, but he later remarked that he felt he had a surplus of fathers, not a deficit, as he developed a relationship with his biological father.
Jackson was a child of the Jim Crow South who nevertheless became a formidable presence in his segregated schools. By high school, he was a popular athlete, earned good grades, and was elected student body president. And then came the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956, which served as a call to arms for many young people across the country. A new day had begun.
Taking a football scholarship at the University of Illinois after graduating from high school in 1959, Jackson returned home to Greenville and found himself unable to use the public library for a school project. So he enlisted the help of seven high school students and launched a sit-in, or “read-in,” strike in July of 1960. By September, the library was successfully desegregated. That fall, Jackson left the University of Illinois and transferred to North Carolina A&T, a historically Black university in Greensboro, North Carolina. He played football there, but unlike at Illinois, he also played quarterback, was elected student body president, and was involved in many local desegregation campaigns.
He earned a B.S. in Sociology in 1964, and then enrolled in the Chicago Theological Seminary, beginning his long relationship with the city, one that would last the rest of his life. He left the seminary in 1966, just a few credits shy of his Master of Divinity, to focus full-time on his activism. By then, he was in King’s orbit, having participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches.
After his relatively brief time at King’s side came to a close and he struck out on his own, Jackson attempted to fill the void created by King’s absence. But as a younger man, he knew he could appeal to the younger generation King had largely lost before his death. He grew out his hair into an impressive afro, and his signature oratory became omnipresent.
Jackson makes an appearance in two of the seminal documentaries of the early seventies: William Greaves’ “Nationtime” (1972), and Mel Stuart’s “Wattstax” (1973). In the latter film, Jackson’s inimitable voice provides the film’s coda. Stuart uses audio of Jackson’s signature “I Am Somebody” speech as we see the faces of all the Black folks who have offered commentary throughout the film about the state of the race. It shows the primacy Jackson occupied at this critical time.
“I Am Somebody” was a key turning point in the rhetoric of the time. Building on his predecessors’ important work, Jackson understood that hard-won opportunities in the workplace or academia would be hollow victories if the internalized racism of white supremacy wasn’t attacked head-on. He wanted Black people to know that degrees and good jobs wouldn’t make them important; he wanted them to know they were already important. When he said those words, millions believed him.
Throughout the 1970s, Operation PUSH racked up a string of wins through nationwide boycotts due to the racist policies of certain brands. Even the mere word that Jackson’s organization was scrutinizing a company could prompt preemptive changes. When the ’80s arrived, and the Reagan Revolution began to roll back many of the victories of the Civil Rights Movement, Jackson began to focus on coalition politics, making inroads into feminist causes and the Gay Rights movement at a time when few cishet Black male activists did.
1983 set the stage for the first of his two historic Democratic presidential campaigns. Harold Washington’s April victory to become the first Black mayor of Chicago no doubt stoked Jackson’s own ambitions. And in a move widely mocked when he first announced it, Jackson took it upon himself to negotiate with the Syrian government for the release of an African-American U.S. Navy pilot, Lt. Robert O. Goodman, who had been captured when he was shot down over Lebanon. Jackson secured his release and brought Goodman home to a White House welcome from President Reagan. Jackson’s critics were stunned into silence.
With his 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns, Jackson endured patronizing dismissal from much of the national media. And he did not get the backing of Coretta Scott King and much of the Civil Rights Movement Old Guard, who preferred tried-and-true candidates. But Jackson’s eloquence and his progressive vision were incredibly effective in the Reagan Era, when the very word “liberal” had become a pejorative.
Jackson’s campaign platform called for ratification of the ERA, a single-payer health care system, sanctions against South Africa, the creation of a Palestinian state, the end of corporate tax cuts, and a return to New Deal era spending. Senator Bernie Sanders has many times cited Jackson’s campaigns as being important and influential in helping him visualize the kind of presidential campaigns he would launch.
Neither of Jackson’s bids was successful in terms of securing the nomination, but the difference between 1984 (when he was perpetually in third place behind Sen. Gary Hart and former VP Walter Mondale, who would go on to be crushed by Reagan) and 1988 (when he gave Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis a run for his money as a close second) spoke volumes. Jackson’s vision spoke to many Americans, and the Democratic Party would ignore his ideas at its peril.
He made his missteps, to be sure. There was the time Jackson used an antisemitic slur to describe Jews and New York City in a conversation he thought was off-the-record. There were multiple credible accusations of sexual harassment brought by female staffers and journalists. And in 2008, a hot mic caught him suggesting that then-candidate Senator Barack Obama should be castrated for chastising Black men for neglecting their fatherly duties. Months later, Jackson was seen at the Hyde Park celebration of Obama’s victory, weeping with a small American flag in the hand that framed his face. It became an iconic image on a historic night.
The 2000s and 2010s saw Jackson on the wane. Reverend Al Sharpton had emerged as a fleet-footed competitor in the national arena as a spokesman for progressive politics. The younger man outstripped the elder, as often happens. Jackson no doubt counted himself lucky to live to see the first African-American President of the United States, and he has been widely and justly cited as an important forefather to that moment. Jackson’s critics from the old guard he came up under often were wary of his rapacious ambition. History will have the last say on that.
Reverend Jackson ends his long life in the public eye with very few ideological missteps to apologize for. He was on the right side of so many issues, even when being on the right side publicly was a risky proposition.
It is sadly ironic to lose him during Black History Month, during a dark time when so much he tried to stop is currently flourishing, but Jackson prepared us for this moment. If you go back and listen to his lauded 1988 Democratic National Convention speech, known for its refrain of “keep hope alive,” it is stirring and evergreen:
“You must never stop dreaming. Face reality, yes, but don’t stop with the way things are. Dream of things as they ought to be. Dream. Face pain, but love, hope, faith, and dreams will help you rise above the pain. Use hope and imagination as weapons of survival and progress, but you keep on dreaming, young America. Dream of peace. Peace is rational and reasonable. War is irrational in this age, and unwinnable.”
