A ‘servant leader’ honored: The nation pays tribute to Jesse Jackson, civil rights icon

By Shauneen Miranda and Jacob Fischler | Kentucky Lantern

WASHINGTON — Tributes poured in across the coun­try for the revered civ­il rights fig­ure the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., who died Tuesday morn­ing at 84.

The two-time Democratic pres­i­den­tial hope­ful and Greenville, South Carolina, native died peace­ful­ly, sur­round­ed by his kin, accord­ing to his family. 

Jackson, who was active in the civ­il rights move­ment as a col­lege stu­dent, worked along­side the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a young adult before King’s 1968 assassination.

Leading his own polit­i­cal move­ment, Jackson became known for his pop­ulist mes­sage, charis­mat­ic deliv­ery and orga­niz­ing prowess that ele­vat­ed the role and influ­ence of Black polit­i­cal lead­ers and helped shape the mod­ern Democratic Party.

“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 in a state­ment. 

“We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extend­ed fam­i­ly,” his fam­i­ly added. “His unwa­ver­ing belief in jus­tice, equal­i­ty, and love uplift­ed mil­lions, and we ask you to hon­or his mem­o­ry by con­tin­u­ing the fight for the val­ues he lived by.”

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, ordered flags to fly at half-staff Tuesday in Jackson’s hon­or in the state where he lived and worked for many years.

The fam­i­ly state­ment did not list a cause of death. Jackson was diag­nosed in 2013 with Parkinson’s dis­ease. His diag­no­sis was updat­ed last year to pro­gres­sive supranu­clear pal­sy, accord­ing to a November state­ment from the Rainbow PUSH Coalition that Jackson founded.

Tributes from Obama, Trump and Biden

Former President Barack Obama, the first Black pres­i­dent, and his wife, Michelle Obama, said Jackson’s runs for the pres­i­den­cy “laid the foun­da­tion” for Barack Obama’s suc­cess­ful 2008 cam­paign. And Chicago native Michelle Obama’s “first glimpse of polit­i­cal orga­niz­ing” was at the Jacksons’ kitchen table, they said.

“From orga­niz­ing boy­cotts and sit-ins, to reg­is­ter­ing mil­lions of vot­ers, to advo­cat­ing for free­dom and democ­ra­cy around the world, he was relent­less in his belief that we are all chil­dren of God, deserv­ing of dig­ni­ty and respect,” they wrote. “Reverend Jackson also cre­at­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties for gen­er­a­tions of African Americans and inspired count­less more, includ­ing us.”

President Donald Trump paid trib­ute, dub­bing Jackson “a force of nature like few oth­ers before him” and a “good man, with lots of per­son­al­i­ty, grit, and ‘street smarts,’” in a social media post Tuesday. 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the high­est-rank­ing Black mem­ber of Congress, hon­ored Jackson as a “leg­endary voice for the voice­less, pow­er­ful civ­il rights cham­pi­on and trail­blaz­er extra­or­di­naire,” in a social media post. 

“For decades, while labor­ing in the vine­yards of the com­mu­ni­ty, he inspired us to keep hope alive in the strug­gle for lib­er­ty and jus­tice for all,” the New York Democrat said.

Jeffries expressed grat­i­tude for Jackson’s “incred­i­ble ser­vice” to the coun­try and “pro­found sac­ri­fice as the people’s champion.” 

Former President Joe Biden called Jackson “a man of God and of the peo­ple. Determined and tena­cious. Unafraid of the work to redeem the soul of our Nation.” 

South Carolina legacy

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat and long­time friend of Jackson, said the civ­il rights leader lived a life “defy­ing odds,” in a state­ment Tuesday. 

“Reverend Jackson showed us that if we all work togeth­er – we can bend the arc of the moral uni­verse and change his­to­ry,” Clyburn said while also point­ing to Jackson’s impact on “the nation, Black Americans, and move­ments to encour­age civic par­tic­i­pa­tion around the world.” 

U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican who is the party’s high­est-rank­ing Black elect­ed offi­cial, hon­ored Jackson’s lega­cy as a leader and role model.

“I don’t have to agree with some­one polit­i­cal­ly to deeply respect the role Jesse Jackson, a South Carolina native, played in uplift­ing Black voic­es and inspir­ing young folks to believe their voic­es mat­tered,” Scott wrote on social media. “Those that empow­er peo­ple to stand taller always leave a last­ing mark. Rest in peace.”

Jackson’s lega­cy will live on in the next gen­er­a­tion, South Carolina state Sen. Deon Tedder said dur­ing a news con­fer­ence Tuesday. 

“The future gen­er­a­tion, they’re pick­ing up that torch, they’re pick­ing up that man­tle,” said Tedder, a Democrat, ges­tur­ing to stu­dents from the state’s his­tor­i­cal­ly Black col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. “The baton has been passed, and now what you see is the future.”

South Carolina state Rep. Hamilton Grant recalled see­ing Jackson at the July 9, 2015, sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the law that removed the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds entire­ly. The flag was tak­en down the next day, 15 years after it came off the Statehouse dome in a com­pro­mise Jackson opposed. 

“For him, being from South Carolina, to see that moment, and me being there in close prox­im­i­ty with him, meant the world to me,” Grant told the South Carolina Daily Gazette. He said Jackson paved the way for Black lead­ers like him and helped instill in him pride in his identity.

The South Carolina House and Senate held moments of silence in Jackson’s hon­or Tuesday. 

“There are so many lit­tle boys and lit­tle girls in South Carolina who can look in the mir­ror now and say, ‘I am some­body!’ because of this native son,” state Sen. Karl Allen, a Democrat, said.

Shaping Democratic politics

Jackson leaves behind a lega­cy of polit­i­cal and social jus­tice work that spanned decades. 

He found­ed the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a nation­al social jus­tice orga­ni­za­tion whose name evoked Jackson’s mul­tira­cial vot­er base and the theme of his 1984 Democratic National Convention speech. That orga­ni­za­tion was formed by a merg­er between Operation PUSH, which Jackson found­ed in 1971, and the Rainbow Coalition.

In his 1988 bid for the pres­i­den­cy, Jackson based his cam­paign in Iowa pri­or to that state’s pres­i­den­tial cau­cus­es and made the offi­cial announce­ment of his can­di­da­cy at a farm in Greenfield on Oct. 10, 1987. 

He fin­ished in fourth place in the cau­cus­es but went on to briefly become the fron­trun­ner for the Democratic nom­i­na­tion by win­ning a coali­tion of Black and Latino vot­ers and white lib­er­als, though he ulti­mate­ly came in sec­ond in del­e­gates to Michael Dukakis. 

Similar blocs pro­pelled Obama to vic­to­ry two decades lat­er and con­tin­ue to form nation­al Democrats’ base.

Two of Jackson’s sons, Jesse Jackson Jr. and Jonathan Jackson, would rep­re­sent Illinois in the U.S. House. Jonathan Jackson remains in office after first win­ning elec­tion in 2022.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist from Vermont who endorsed Jackson’s 1988 cam­paign, said in a Tuesday state­ment Jackson had been a friend and ally for near­ly 40 years and cred­it­ed Jackson with found­ing mod­ern progressivism.

“His cre­ation of the Rainbow Coalition, a rev­o­lu­tion­ary idea at the time, that devel­oped a grass­roots move­ment of work­ing peo­ple — Black, white, Latino, Asian-American, Native-American, gay and straight — laid the foun­da­tion for the mod­ern pro­gres­sive move­ment which is con­tin­u­ing to fight for his vision of eco­nom­ic, racial, social and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice,” Sanders wrote. “Jackson has had a pro­found impact upon our coun­try. His pol­i­tics of togeth­er­ness and sol­i­dar­i­ty should guide us going forward.”

‘Equal justice is not inevitable’

Georgia U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat and a Baptist pas­tor, recalled the influ­ence Jackson’s pres­i­den­tial runs had on a young Warnock grow­ing up in pub­lic housing.

“With an elo­quence and rhyth­mic rhetoric all his own, Jesse Jackson remind­ed America that equal jus­tice is not inevitable,” he said. “It requires vig­i­lance and com­mit­ment, and for free­dom fight­ers, sac­ri­fice. His min­istry was poet­ry and spir­i­tu­al pow­er in the pub­lic square. He advanced King’s dream and bent the arc of his­to­ry clos­er to justice.”

Jaime Harrison, a for­mer chair of the Democratic National Committee, said Jackson’s 1988 run, which cul­mi­nat­ed with a speech at the par­ty con­ven­tion that laud­ed the United States’ mul­tira­cial iden­ti­ty, inspired him.

As “a poor Black kid from South Carolina,” Harrison said he was drawn to Jackson’s com­mand of the con­ven­tion hall after accu­mu­lat­ing more than 1,000 delegates.

“He did not win the nom­i­na­tion,” Harrison wrote. “But he won our imagination.”

Adrian Ashford con­tributed to this report.