Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights icon and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, has died. He was 84.
The Baptist minister died on Tuesday, Feb. 17, his family announced in a statement on Instagram, sharing that he died “peacefully” and “surrounded by his family.”
“Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” the Jackson family said in the statement. “We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family. 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.”
On Nov. 12, 2025, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, his civil rights organization, announced that Jackson had been admitted into the hospital and was undergoing observation for his progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP).
Progressive supranuclear palsy is a brain disease that causes an individual to have issues with balance, swallowing, walking and eye movements, according to the Mayo Clinic. The condition is caused by damage to brain cells.
Days later, his family said Jackson was stable and dispelled rumors that he had been placed on life support. “Reverend Jackson is in stable condition and is breathing without the assistance of machines,” his family wrote in their statement.
The family statement added that arrangements for Jackson’s celebration of life services will be released by the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
Born in Greenville, S.C., on Oct. 8, 1941, Jackson has been on the frontlines of numerous historic events in the U.S.
He famously marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s and was with King the morning he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968.
“Every time I think about it, it’s like pulling a scab off a sore,” he told The Guardian in 2018. “It’s a hurtful, painful thought: that a man of love is killed by hate; that a man of peace should be killed by violence; a man who cared is killed by the careless.”
He twice ran for the U.S. presidency, in 1984 and 1988, and was instrumental in securing the release of three U.S. soldiers from Yugoslavia in May 1999 after personally appealing to President Slobodan Milosevic.
In 2000, Jackson was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by former President Bill Clinton, who recognized Jackson’s “keen intellect and loving heart.”
He was also a talented athlete, having received both an offer to play baseball with the Chicago White Sox and a scholarship to play football at the University of Illinois after graduating high school, according to CNN.
Jackson is survived by his wife, Jacqueline Jackson, whom he married in 1962, their five children and his grandchildren. He also shares a daughter with a former staffer with whom he had an affair before the child’s birth in May 1999.
Jackson has faced a series of medical setbacks in recent years.
In November 2021, he was hospitalized after falling and hitting his head during an event at Howard University. The accident occurred at the school’s Blackburn Center, and Jackson was taken to a local hospital for evaluation, the university said in a statement at the time.
That incident came two months after he was hospitalized with his wife after testing positive for COVID-19.
In 2017, Jackson was initially diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a neurological disorder that causes tremors, stiffness and difficulty balancing, walking and coordinating movement, according to the National Institute on Aging.
However, despite his original diagnosis, in April 2024, it was confirmed that he actually had PSP, which as CNN noted, can have similar symptoms to Parkinson’s disease.
According to the Mayo Clinic, the “only proven risk factor” for PSP is age, with the condition typically affecting people in their late 60s and 70s.
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