civil rights Archives

Former US presidents, celebrities and thousands of members of the public have gathered to honour civil rights leader, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who died last month.

Former presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were among those who spoke at a memorial service in Chicago for the activist.

Mourners included former Vice President Kamala Harris, filmmaker Tyler Perry and former basketball star Isiah Thomas. The service also featured performances, including from singer and actress Jennifer Hudson.

Jackson, who worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr, twice ran to be the Democratic nominee for president and founded the Rainbow PUSH coalition, a social justice and civil rights non-profit.

While praising Jackson in his remarks at the service, Obama made a thinly veiled mention of US President Donald Trump. He said, “Each day we wake up to some new assault on our democratic institutions”.

He said the late reverend inspired people to take a harder path and called “on each of us to be heralds of change”.

Former Vice President Harris received a standing ovation when she spoke at the service. She appeared to take a jab at Trump, saying, “Let me just start out by saying: I predicted a lot of what is happening right now. I hate to say I told you so, but we did see it coming”.

But, she added, that she didn’t realise they would be tackling this moment without Jackson’s guidance.

Calling Jackson “impatient,” she noted, “He did not waste time waiting, even when the doors in front of him were barred and bolted, even if those on the other side hesitated or even ignored him. He always devised a way through”.

Civil rights leader, the Reverend Al Sharpton, who worked closely with Jackson during the civil rights movement, was also among the speakers. (BBC)

Veteran US civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson, one of the nation’s most influential Black voices, died peacefully Tuesday morning, his family said in a statement. He was 84.

Jackson, a Baptist minister, had been a civil rights leader since the 1960s, when he marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and helped fundraise for the cause.

“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.

“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.”

The family did not release a cause of death, but Jackson revealed in 2017 that he had the degenerative neurological disease Parkinson’s.

He was hospitalized for observation in November in connection to another neurodegenerative condition, according to media reports.

A dynamic orator and a successful mediator in international disputes, the long-time Baptist minister expanded the space for African Americans on the national stage for more than six decades.

He was the most prominent Black person to run for the US presidency — with two unsuccessful attempts to capture the Democratic Party nomination in the 1980s — until Barack Obama took the office in 2009.

He was present for many consequential moments in the long battle for racial justice in the United States, including with King in Memphis in 1968 when the civil rights leader was slain.

He openly wept in the crowd as Obama celebrated his 2008 presidential election, and he stood with George Floyd’s family in 2021 after a court convicted an ex-police officer of the unarmed Black man’s murder.

Jackson was born Jesse Louis Burns on October 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, to an unwed teen mother and a former professional boxer.

He later adopted the last name of his stepfather, Charles Jackson.

“I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had a shovel programmed for my hands,” he once said.

He excelled in his segregated high school and earned a football scholarship to the University of Illinois, but later transferred to the predominantly Black Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina, where he received a degree in sociology.

In 1960, he participated in his first sit-in, in Greenville, and then joined the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights marches in 1965, where he caught King’s attention.

Jackson later emerged as a mediator and envoy on several notable international fronts.

He became a prominent advocate for ending apartheid in South Africa, and in the 1990s served as presidential special envoy for Africa for Bill Clinton.

Missions to free US prisoners took him to Syria, Iraq, and Serbia.

He founded the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a Chicago-based nonprofit organization focused on social justice and political activism, in 1996

He is survived by his wife and six children. (Channels)

Tag: civil rights

US presidents gather to honour Jesse Jackson at memorial service

US Civil Rights Leader Jesse Jackson dies at 84