Longtime civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson hospitalized
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a civil rights leader and former presidential candidate, has been hospitalized, according to the Rainbow Push Coalition.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who died on February 17 at the age of 84, was a tireless activist, tireless orator, talented diplomat, and influential politician who transformed politics and diversified the Democratic Party during his two White House campaigns.
Known for his ability to weave unity across lines of race, class, gender, and religion, his legacy is a tapestry of efforts to advance civil and human rights, peace, equality, and economic and social justice.
Here are five key moments in Jackson’s career.
Jackson’s evolution as an activist
As a freshman at the University of Illinois, Jackson was one of eight young black high school and college students arrested during a sit-in at a white-only library in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina, in the summer of 1960. The so-called Greenville Eight protests would spur library desegregation two months later.
After transferring to North Carolina A&T State University, Jackson became a student leader in the institution’s desegregation efforts in Greensboro, and then began studying at the University of Chicago’s seminary.
Bloody Sunday would change Jackson’s life and career. The March 1965 incident in Selma, Alabama, in which peaceful marchers were attacked by state troopers with tear gas and clubs, ultimately led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It also led Jackson to leave Chicago, join the Selma effort, and join the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a civil rights organization founded by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The following year, King appointed Jackson director of the Chicago chapter of Operation Breadbasket, the economic arm of the conference, which fought for greater black representation in the corporate workforce.
Jackson’s activities are on a national level
In 1971, Jackson left the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to start Operation PUSH, People United to Save Humanity (“save” was later changed to “serve”), which was dedicated to black self-help, youth development, and economic opportunity.
The group used persuasion, boycotts, and all-night prayer vigils to successfully win concessions from white-owned businesses and businesses to hire a more diverse workforce.
In 1984, Jackson entered politics and founded the National Rainbow Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based social justice organization that promotes equal rights for blacks, women, and gays. Among its key efforts was to advocate for ethnic minorities affected by President Ronald Reagan’s efforts to cut domestic spending, particularly efforts targeting inner cities.
The two organizations merged in 1996 to become the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, which continues to fight for civil rights and economic and academic opportunity in the United States and around the world. Jackson’s group helped bring many causes into the mainstream, including national health care, peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, and acceptance of the LGBTQ community.
Jackson will step down as leader of the coalition government in 2023.
Two groundbreaking presidential bids.
A year after leading the voter registration effort that helped Harold Washington win election as Chicago’s first black mayor, Jackson sought the Democratic presidential nomination. He was the second black candidate to run for president at the national level, after Shirley Chisholm in 1972. Although he finished third in the primary vote, he became the first black politician to win a state primary for a major party, and his grassroots campaign helped revitalize the Democratic Party by encouraging hundreds of thousands of people to register to vote.
In 1988, Jackson ran for president again, doubling his vote share in the 1984 primary on a progressive, unifying platform that served as an antidote to what many saw as the racist policies of the Reagan administration.
Journalist David Masciotra said Jackson’s campaign helped diversify the Democratic Party and usher in a new wave of black leaders across the country. Among them is Douglas Wilder of Virginia, who in 1990 became the first black governor since Reconstruction. David Dinkins was elected New York City’s first black mayor in 1989. In the same year, Norm Rice was elected Seattle’s first black mayor.
world diplomat
In the late 1970s, Jackson began traveling abroad to help resolve global conflicts and draw attention to global causes, denouncing apartheid in South Africa and advocating for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
In 1984, Jackson negotiated the release of Navy Lt. Robert Goodman, who was captured in Syria. That same year, he secured the release of Cuban prisoners of war who were in Cuba.
In 1997, President Bill Clinton appointed Jackson as special envoy to Africa, where he met with leaders such as South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, Kenya’s Daniel T. arap Moi, and Zambia’s Frederick Chiluba.
Jackson mediated the release of American soldiers held in Kosovo in 1999. The following year, he helped arrange the release of four British journalists held in Liberia.
Health problems began to slow Jackson’s work down.
In August 2000, Clinton awarded Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor.
But even as Mr. Jackson continued to push for justice, equality, voting rights, and an end to poverty, growing health problems began to take their toll.
In 2017, he issued a letter announcing that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease four years ago, and said that his father had also been affected by Parkinson’s disease.
“I find it increasingly difficult to perform everyday tasks and find it increasingly difficult to get around,” he wrote. “For a while, I resisted taking time off from work to see a doctor. But as the daily physical struggle intensified, I could no longer ignore the symptoms.”
Jackson received treatment in November 2021 after falling and hitting his head at Howard University.
In April 2025, doctors updated Jackson’s original diagnosis to progressive supranuclear palsy, according to the Cleveland Clinic. This is a rare chronic neurodegenerative disease known as PSP, whose early symptoms are often mistaken for Parkinson’s disease.
He said the experience of being arrested as a young college student gave him a certain adrenaline rush.
“We finally have the courage to stand up and fight back,” he told The Greenville News, part of the USA TODAY Network. As the civil rights movement spread across the northern United States, “we became soldiers in a domestic war.”
Despite renewed attacks on civil rights in recent years, he remained optimistic.
“As a group of Americans, white, black, and brown, we will press forward, even though we are facing some truly vile cold winds.”
He said he wants to be remembered as someone who cared deeply about people and racial reconciliation.
“I think people who have learned to live apart now have to learn to live together,” he says. “…I want to be remembered as a soldier in the fight to make America better and the world safer.”
