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Rev. Jesse Jackson, a longtime US civil rights leader, two-time presidential candidate and African American icon died on Tuesday aged 84, his family said.
Jesse Jackson, who died Tuesday aged 84, had a three-pronged career of civil rights, liberal missions and political activism, and his two White House bids in the 1980s helped lay the groundwork for the election of America's first Black president two decades later.
Jackson's family announced his death, hailing "his unwavering belief in justice, equality, and love uplifted millions".
US President Donald Trump praised the late Jesse Jackson on Tuesday as one of a kind and took credit for helping the iconic civil rights leader as he fought to empower Black Americans.
"Jesse was a force of nature like few others before him," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
As a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s, a dynamic Black orator and a successful mediator in international disputes, the longtime Baptist minister expanded the space for African Americans on the national stage for more than six decades.
Jackson was present for many consequential moments in the long battle for racial justice in the United States.
He was with King in Memphis in 1968 when the civil rights leader was slain; openly wept in the crowd as Barack Obama celebrated his 2008 presidential election; and stood with George Floyd's family in 2021 after a court convicted an ex-police officer of the unarmed Black man's murder.
"My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised," Jackson told the 1984 Democratic National Convention.
He rose to prominence in the 1960s as a leader in King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
He launched two social justice and activism organisations: Operation PUSH in 1971, and the National Rainbow Coalition a dozen years later. The two groups merged in 1996.
- FRANCE 24 with AFP
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