17th July, 2023
Rev. Jesse Jackson, a renowned American civil rights icon for more than half a century, has announced he will retire from his Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a social movement that grew from Martin Luther King Jr.’s Operation Breadbasket.
Jackson was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2017 and has since suffered a fall as well as hospitalization due to Covid-19.
Jackson announced Rev. Frederick Haynes III as his successor on Sunday at the 57th annual Rainbow PUSH Coalition convention. Haynes is the head of Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas.
With his departure, Rev. Al Sharpton remains perhaps the nation’s top civil rights leader.
His retirement announcement prompted a statement from President Joe Biden, who on Sunday said that Jackson had helped lead the nation forward “through tumult and triumph.”
“Whether on the campaign trail, on the march for equality, or in the room advocating for what is right and just, I’ve seen him as history will remember him: a man of God and of the people; determined, strategic, and unafraid of the work to redeem the soul of our nation,” Biden said.
“Jill and I are grateful to Rev. Jackson for his lifetime of dedicated service and extend our appreciation to the entire Jackson family. We look forward to working with the Rainbow PUSH Coalition as he hands the torch to the next generation of leadership, just as we will continue to cherish the counsel and wisdom that we draw from him.”
Jackson, 81, was born in South Carolina and attended a racially segregated high school in Greenville, graduating in 1959. He first attended the mostly-white University of Illinois on a football scholarship but transferred to the historically Black university North Carolina A&T.
In 1960, Jackson and seven others conducted a sit-in at the whites-only Greenville Public Library and was arrested for disorderly conduct in an incident that has been referred to as the “Greenville Eight.”
He later started working for King and participated in the 1965 marches from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama along the likes of the late Rep. John Lewis and Sen. Hosea Williams.
Jackson has been described as a member of King’s inner circle and was pictured standing with him on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel before his assassination.
Like many of his fellow civil rights activists, he attempted to get into politics and became the first Black candidate to launch a serious presidential campaign in 1984 — finishing third in the Democratic primary behind Walter Mondale and Gary Hart. He ran again in 1988 but lost to Michael Dukakis.
The Rainbow PUSH Coalition provided a statement to the Chicago Sun-Times regarding Jackson’s future, and it appears the 81-year-old will not be letting Parkinson’s Disease slow him down: “His commitment is unwavering, and he will elevate his life’s work by teaching ministers how to fight for social justice and continue the freedom movement