“Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed," the Jackson family said in a statement to CNBC early Tuesday morning, "the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world. 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.”
Jackson was hospitalized in November 2025, according to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, which said he was receiving treatment and asked supporters for prayers. He had previously lived with Parkinson’s disease and was later diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy.
Civil-rights leader Jesse Jackson, whose decades of activism, political organizing, and controversy have made him one of the nation’s leading voices for racial justice, died Monday at the age of 84. Jackson ran for president in 1984 and 1988 and was with Dr. Martin Luther King when he was killed in Memphis. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000 and many honorary degrees.