Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. embodied an era of civil rights leadership that relied on a big charismatic personality. And that he was. Tall and handsome, eloquent and fiery, Jackson whipped up crowds — whether in Black churches the way a Baptist pastor is prone to do or with white rural farmers during one of his two historic runs for U.S. president.
Perhaps the nation’s most recognizable civil rights icon the past half century, Jackson was a symbol of Black politics and Black America. The images of him — as a young lieutenant to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on a Memphis balcony in 1968 to his exhortations of “I Am Somebody” or “Keep Hope Alive” in front of racially diverse audiences on the campaign trail in the 1980s to him weeping in Grant Park at the election of this nation’s first Black president in 2008 — are seared in our collective memories. A global presence, Jackson spoke out against apartheid, championed Palestinian rights and negotiated the release of U.S. soldiers in Syria, Iraq and Yugoslavia.
Jackson sought and relished the limelight, on television, magazine covers and protests. But his journey always led him right back to the South Side of Chicago, the home base of different iterations of his coalition, today Rainbow PUSH in the Kenwood neighborhood. For decades, his legendary Saturday convenings and their live broadcasts, complete with choirs and guest speakers, captured the zeitgeist of issues facing Black people. One would find a scrappy, corduroy-clad young organizer named Barack Obama in the audience, pop music superstar Michael Jackson wandering the headquarters next door, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan popping out of a conference room or South African anti-apartheid movement leader Nelson Mandela at the pulpit following his release from prison.
Jackson’s operation has produced scholarships for youth, pressured Wall Street and other corporations and demanded more from the tech industry. The result has been corporations investing in minority-owned firms and Black board members on Silicon Valley companies. His civil rights message evolved from demands for desegregation in public spaces and voting rights in the 1960s to those calling for racial economic justice in recent years.
Jackson died Tuesday at age 84, his family said in a statement. In 2017, he revealed he had Parkinson’s Disease but the family said in 2025 that he had progressive supranuclear palsy, a neurological disease that can be misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s.
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In 1966, George and Joan Johnson — founders of the iconic Black hair care company Johnson Products — strolled the quadrangle at the University of Chicago and heard a booming voice waft out of the chapel. The sound lured them in, and they saw a young Jackson, a Chicago Theological Seminary student, speaking. An impressed George Johnson arranged for the 24-year-old Jackson to later meet him in his office.
“Jesse was one of the most brilliant young men that I’ve ever met,” Johnson recalled.
Later that year, Martin Luther King Jr. asked Johnson to gather 50 Black businessmen. In the Johnson Products cafeteria, Jackson was introduced as the Chicago director of Operation Breadbasket, an economic program of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Operation Breadbasket targeted the dairy, soft drink and supermarket industries. Negotiations and boycotts led to Black hiring. Breadbasket’s Saturday morning meetings engaged Black crowds with jingles and speeches about self-determination, Black buying power and the need for jobs.
“He opened the doors to a lot of small businesses. He even helped us, especially with Jewel, Walgreens, to get our retail products in those places,” Johnson said, referring to the iconic brand Ultra Sheen.
“While managing Breadbasket in Chicago, Jackson built an impressive network of ministers who took the original idea of economic integration in the direction of black capitalism. Describing slums as an American Bantustan, in reference to the all-black territories established by the white South African government, Jackson declared that African-American ghettos formed an ‘underdeveloped nation’ with abundant labor and insufficient capital,” wrote scholar Enrico Beltramini in 2014, of Jackson’s globalization of Black businesses.
In 1967, Jackson became the national director of Operation Breadbasket. But King’s death in 1968 led to the formal break of Jackson’s ties with SCLC, which already suffered from tensions about his leadership style. Jackson stayed in Chicago with his wife and growing family. Operation Breadbasket morphed into Operation PUSH in 1971. The following year he established Black Expo, another showcase for businesses. By then, Jackson had solid footing with his own platform pushing for Black automobile dealerships, fast-food franchise owners as well as Black union membership.
Rev. Janette Wilson, a senior adviser to Jackson who first met him on the Operation Breadbasket picket lines, said had he created a church in Chicago, it would’ve competed with other pastors. Saturday mornings became the mainstay that attracted block club members, grassroots leaders and community organization leaders.
“This Saturday gathering of people, popular personalities, clergy, musicians and artists provide for the broader community, at that time on radio, an analysis of the critical issues of the day. Things that they would not get on the news,” Wilson said. “Our Saturday broadcast still endeavors to educate, inform and engage people in the struggle for human rights, social justice, and fairness and equity.”
Oprah Winfrey visited before she became a household name. Michael Jordan played in basketball games that support PUSH. West Sider Danny Davis spent many a Saturday there before he became a U.S. Representative in Congress.
“It really gave activists the energy and the motivation that they needed to go out the rest of the week. We’d say you go to PUSH to get charged up, to get your battery charged and then you can go back the rest of the next week and do what you had to do,” Davis said. “Everybody wanted to get to the Saturday morning opportunity, and would jump off the top of the Sears Tower to get there to be at the forum to get that three or five minutes.”
In many ways, PUSH served as an outlet for Black political frustration with the Chicago Democratic Party machine. The PUSH stage is where Harold Washington announced his successful candidacy as the first Black mayor of Chicago.
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PUSH was also where Jackson launched his historic run for the U.S. presidency, making him the second Black presidential candidate in history at the time. He ran serious campaigns in 1984 and 1988 that gained traction during the time of Reaganomics, which wreaked havoc in cuts to Black communities all over the country.
Despite not catapulting to the White House, Jackson formed a “rainbow coalition” of Blacks, whites, Latinos, LGBTQ people and others with progressive politics and inclusivity. That coalition lasted even after the political campaigns ended, and Operation PUSH transitioned into something new — the Rainbow PUSH Coalition — in 1996.
Chicago political strategist Delmarie Cobb served as his national traveling press secretary during the 1988 presidential campaign.
“He was the easiest person in the world to work with because he was smart as he can be,” Cobb said. “I have wanted to find a candidate like this ever since him, that you could literally pass him a note while he’s giving a speech. He will look at the note and never miss a beat and incorporate what it is you pass to him.”
Cobb said the campaign also found nontraditional ways to fundraise.
“We literally went to black churches and passed out Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets and made collections. And those collections are what kept the campaign going,” she said.
And that led to winning primary states like Michigan — something political pundits didn’t think Jackson could do.
On her first day on the trail, Cobb said they traveled to Texas and a burly white man showed up at a rally.
“He said, ‘I waited here for you. Because I was in Selma, when you marched in Selma.’ And so Jackson immediately said, ‘Brother, good to see you. I’m so glad you’re with me.’ He said ‘No, but I wasn’t with you then. I was keeping you from marching. And this time, I want to be on the right side of history,’” Cobb recalled.
In 2014, 30 years after his first historic run, Jackson reflected on WBEZ.
“We’ve changed the makeup of the American democracy and that was a part of our mission in the first place,” he said.
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After the campaign, Jackson used his clout to be a Democratic Party broker. Chicago was still his home base, but the reverend used that same clout to take on international causes, sometimes to the chagrin of the U.S. government.
University of Illinois-Chicago professor Barbara Ransby invited Jackson to campus numerous times to speak on issues such as immigration or policing. She said it’s been important for students to see living history and hear about a career that had an arc from addressing class and poverty to a strand of Black internationalism.
“He comes from the progressive Black faith community, and I come from a Black left feminist tradition,” Ransby said. “We’ve always had mutual respect. I appreciate that he’s taken difficult stands in support of, for example, Palestinian human rights, LGBTQ rights, … in supporting radical versus more moderate political candidates at certain points in time. He has not shied away from issues that are unsafe, so I appreciate that about him.”
But Jackson has been criticized for having too much media exposure and coming off too much like a celebrity. As he became an elder statesman, younger activists haven’t always been drawn to him. After the release of video showing Black Chicago teenager Laquan McDonald being shot and killed by police in 2015, marchers took to the streets. Jackson was one of them and some news outlets focused on him, which angered young protesters who felt they were part of a changing of the guard.
Cobb said people who are dismissive of Jackson fail to recognize his wealth of knowledge and strategy. But she said the liability of Black institutions is how they are built around a single personality.
“PUSH should not be built around Jackson, because then what happens when there is no Jesse Jackson?” Cobb said.
Now the world will find out.
Natalie Moore is a a senior lecturer at Northwestern University. You can follow her on Twitter at @natalieymoore.
