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Civil Rights Icon Jesse Jackson Dead at 84. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired February 17, 2026 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[06:00:12]
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. I'm Pamela Brown, in for Audie Cornish, and we start this hour with the breaking news. Civil rights icon, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, whose towering presence and vision reshaped the Democratic Party and the country, has died at the age of 84.
His family posted this statement on Instagram: "Our father was a servant leader -- not only to our family but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world. We ask you to honor his memory by continuing to fight for the values he lived by."
CNN's Abby Phillip has a look at Jesse Jackson's life and legacy.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Jesse Jackson's life was defined by a relentless fight for justice and equality.
REV. JESSE JACKSON, CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER: I was born in Greenville, South Carolina, in rampant, radical, racial segregation. Had to be taught to go to the back of the bus or be arrested.
PHILLIP (voice-over): Those early experiences drove Jackson to join the civil rights movement.
JESSE JACKSON: The fact is, against the odds -- we knew there were great odds -- we were winning.
PHILLIP (voice-over): In 1965, he began working for Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
JESSE JACKSON: I learned so much from him, such a great source of inspiration.
PHILLIP (voice-over): King named Jackson to lead Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, an economic justice campaign for black people. However, some say King was frustrated by Jackson's brashness and ambition.
JESSE JACKSON: I'm sure he felt I needed more time. I was 24 years old.
PHILLIP (voice-over): Both men were in Memphis in April 1968 to support striking sanitation workers. King and other civil rights leaders were staying at the Lorraine Motel.
JESSE JACKSON: He said, Jesse, you know, you don't even have on a shirt and tie. You don't even have on a tie. We're going to dinner. I said, "Doc, it does not require a tie, just an appetite." We laughed.
I said, "Doc," and the bullet hit. Everything changed at that moment. It was a defining moment in the history of our struggle.
PHILLIP (voice-over): With King gone, his movement was adrift. Years later, Jackson formed Operation PUSH, pressuring businesses to open up to black workers and customers, and adding more focus on black responsibility, championed in the 1972 concert, Wattstax.
JESSE JACKSON: In Watts, we have shifted from "burn, baby, burn" to "learn, baby, learn."
PHILLIP (voice-over): And he expanded his own global reach, too, helping to free U.S. lieutenant Robert Goodman, who was held by Syria
after being shot down, and later other Americans held in Cuba and Serbia.
JESSE JACKSON: I learned how to negotiate as an African American growing up among white people. You have to negotiate every day.
PHILLIP (voice-over): The Reverend set his sights on the White House in 1984
JESSE JACKSON: Milking cows (ph) and all were coming back to the inner cities. So, I learned a lot during that period.
First thought of as a marginal candidate, Jackson finished third in the primary race with 18 percent of the vote.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (singing): That rainbow train a-comin'.
JESSE JACKSON: Coming, coming.
PHILLIP (voice-over): That campaign almost went off the rails when Jackson used an ethnic slur to refer to New York Jews.
JESSE JACKSON: There was mistakes, and they hurt.
PHILLIP (voice-over): He ran again in 1988, this time doubling his vote count and finishing in second in the Democratic race.
JESSE JACKSON: Tip of the line, open tomorrow tonight.
PHILLIP (voice-over): At the time, it was the farthest any black candidate had gone in a presidential contest.
JESSE JACKSON: But 20 years later, when President Barack ran, we were laying the groundwork for that season.
PHILLIP (voice-over): In 2017, Jackson had a new battle to fight: Parkinson's disease. But that didn't stop him.
JESSE JACKSON: If you hold on, if your cause is right, and your grip is tight, you'll make it.
PHILLIP (voice-over): Late in life, he was still fighting. He was arrested in Washington while demonstrating for voting rights. His silent presence at the trial of Ahmaud Arbery's killers prompted defense lawyers to ask that he leave the courtroom. Jackson stayed.
JESSE JACKSON: I am --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am --
JESSE JACKSON: Somebody.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Somebody.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Somebody.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Somebody
PHILLIP (voice-over): From the Jim Crow South, through the turbulent '60s and into the Black Lives Matter movement, Jesse Jackson was a constant unyielding voice for justice.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[06:05:03]
BROWN: May his memory be a blessing. That was CNN's Abby Phillip reporting. She even wrote a book about Jesse Jackson.
Reverend Jackson is survived by his wife, Jacqueline. Their children, grandchildren and extended family.
Joining us today in the group chat, Jeff Zeleny, CNN chief national affairs correspondent; Chuck Rocha, Democratic strategist and former adviser to Bernie Sanders's presidential campaigns; and Ashley Davis former White House official under President George W. Bush.
Jeff, I want to start with you. You actually just finished reading Abby's book, "A Dream Deferred." And we were talking about how Jesse Jackson served as sort of the bridge from dr. Martin Luther King Jr. -- he was his protege -- to President Obama, to present day. I mean, he -- he kept fighting until the very end.
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: There's no doubt about it. And the -- really the towering legacy and figure that Jesse Jackson was is unparalleled in Americas 20th Century.
Barack Obama would not have been elected as the first black president in America without Jesse Jackson, not because they had a close relationship. They did not. It was stressed. It was filled with tension. Their family did. But this is why. Because Jesse Jackson, through his 1984 bid for
president and 1988 candidacy for president, he literally changed the Democratic Party and changed the way Democrats elect their presidents.
Gone are the smoke-filled back rooms at party conventions where the candidate was decided. But Jesse Jackson opened up that process through making it a delegate fight.
And Barack Obama seized upon that in 2007 and 2008 and built a grass a grassroots campaign that was basically the modern-day version at the time of what Jesse Jackson did, particularly in 1988. So, he paved the way for that.
But so much more. He literally was the bridge between the two.
But Barack Obama, as I think back to covering him during my time in Chicago, he moved to Chicago, in part, because he wanted the black American political experience. And Jesse Jackson was that in Chicago.
He left Memphis after Dr. King's assassination, and Jesse Jackson was there. And he moved to Chicago to start the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, really building the broad-based modern Democratic Party.
And as Chuck knows well, without Jesse Jackson, a very similar message to what Bernie Sanders did in his campaign in 2016 and 2020, economic justice, really building a broad-based coalition.
So, the through lines there are so important. Jesse Jackson's fingers -- his fingerprints are on our politics right now at the moment, as well.
BROWN: Yes.
CHUCK ROCHA, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: And let me build on what Jeff said, because it's really, really important. Because Democrats need to remind themselves today as we live in the Trump presidency, about what Jesse Jackson did.
He went out, as a black man, and talked to poor white farmers. He went out and talked to union members about keeping jobs in America. He started building a coalition, to Jeff's point, before Barack Obama about bringing together black, brown and poor white people to say, look, it's not left versus right. It's up versus down.
And he was the one who really started that in a day when, in the back rooms of smoke-filled rooms that Jeff talked about was where the power lies. And some would say, I would even -- might say that some of that power has reemerged when we should get back to what Jesse Jackson used to talk about, which is the workers and the workers' party.
ASHLEY DAVIS, FORMER WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL UNDER GEORGE W. BUSH: Because in an interesting way, President Trump has kind of gotten a lot of that coalition, especially in this past election, from increasing his black voters. But also the -- the poor white people that just feel like the government does not help them anymore, and they've lost their way. But I have a question. So, I haven't read her book yet. I know you
both have, but what -- what was the complicated relationship about with Obama?
BROWN: I was wondering. I was going to follow up with that, too. No, it's a great question, because I think people will -- will wonder that.
ZELENY: Look, one of the -- one of the -- the pieces of the complicated relationship was that, when Barack Obama was running for president, Reverend Jackson thought that Senator Obama didn't pay him the respect that he wanted at the time, necessarily.
And Jesse Jackson was not a part of the Obama campaign. His son was Jesse Jackson Jr., the member of Congress. He was a national co-chair.
But there was always a tension between Senator Obama and Reverend Jackson at the time, largely because Jesse Jackson wanted to be a bigger part of the campaign.
The Obama campaign obviously did not want to go anywhere near him for political reasons and other reasons.
But as Abby writes about in her book, they did reconcile in recent months and years and have a conversation, but largely, because Reverend Jackson did not think that President Obama sort of gave him his due, if you will.
But during the campaign, Jesse Jackson, back in 2008 -- I was just looking at the story. I wrote about it at the time. He criticized Obama openly for talking down to black men. And this is something that Senator Obama would talk about a lot, that black men have responsibilities as fathers, and they should live up to those more.
[06:10:05]
But Jesse Jackson has said that Obama was talking down to black men. He had to apologize for his criticism.
So, just a lot of tension over the years between them.
But their families were very close. The maid of honor at the Obamas' wedding was the oldest daughter of Jesse and Jackie Jackson. So, they are deeply intertwined because of the South Side of Chicago.
But back to Chuck's point. Some of the most iconic political images of the 20th Century will be Jesse Jackson on a farm in Iowa on a tractor, surrounded by hundreds of white farmers who were caught up in the farming crisis of 1980.
Jesse Jackson was their voice, and that is something that truly was iconic at the time.
BROWN: And I just want to go back and listen to what Reverend Jesse Jackson said when he first ran for president back in 1984. Let's play that sound and talk on the other side. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JESSE JACKSON: If blacks vote in great numbers, progressive whites win. It's the only way progressive whites win. If blacks vote in great numbers, Hispanics win. When blacks, Hispanics, and progressive whites vote, women win.
When women win, children win. When women and children win, workers win. We must all come up together. We must come up together.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: So, that was the first time he ran.
DAVIS: The first time, yes.
ROCHA: Right.
BROWN: But he ran again, as we know. But I think it's important, because as we were talking about, Jesse Jackson really set the stage for President Obama's win. And part of that was getting millions of black Americans to register to vote.
ROCHA: Yes, and it's a big part of today's politics. I keep going back to that.
My firm is one of the largest minority-owned firms in the country. I fight every day to try to get more folks -- poor folks, black folks, Brown folks into campaigns.
There would be no Chuck Rocha without Jesse Jackson, because he called truth to power. And what I mean by that is easy. And progressives and liberals love to talk about that.
But it was hard to go to that white farm, to what Jeff was saying. It was hard to go say the things he said at that speech. It was hard to go take on the backroom politicians.
You know, we referred to Bernie Sanders, who I got to work for. There would be no Bernie Sanders without him. Bernie Sanders, back in the day, as an old white progressive, then young white progressive from Vermont, was a Jesse Jackson delegate. People forget that, because that coalition has to be brought back together and --
DAVIS: And it's the same message, though.
ROCHA: It's the same message. It was.
ZELENY: Populism.
DAVIS: Yes, yes, exactly.
BROWN: Yes. Certainly, his --
DAVIS: If you think about that speech that you just played, that was so before his -- I mean, that was 1984. And what his message was about women and that was just something way beyond his time, I think.
ZELENY: Supported gay rights.
DAVIS: Gay rights, yes.
ZELENY: Was the first presidential candidate to --
ROCHA: First major Democrat.
ZELENY: Very first Democratic candidate to do it.
So, truly built a coalition that is today's modern Democratic coalition. But it's fracturing, there's no doubt about it.
BROWN: Yes, no. For sure. And his legacy is enduring. We're going to take a quick break.
Group chat, stay with us. Our breaking news coverage continues after the break. Civil rights activist and pioneer, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, has passed away at the age of 84. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:17:42]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What do you hope your legacy will be?
JESSE JACKSON: Nonstop service. I want to die with my shoes on. I want to work it out.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why are you so optimistic?
JESSE JACKSON: My back is against the wall. There's no -- there's no future in hopelessness. We're going to keep our hope alive.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Keep our hope alive. And this morning, we are remembering the life and the legacy of the Reverend Jesse Jackson. The civil rights icon has died at the age of 84.
He was born in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1941.
In 1984, his father told "The New York Times," "Jesse was an unusual kind of fella, even when he was just learning to talk. He would say I'm going to lead people through the rivers of the water."
I want to bring in another son of South Carolina. And that would be Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright. How did Reverend Jesse Jackson impact you personally, Antjuan?
ANTJUAN SEAWRIGHT, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, a thread has been pulled from the fabric of the civil rights movement of this country and, certainly, of our community. Reverend Jackson grew up in the segregated South. His fight and his
day happens to be the fight of our day.
As a 40-year-old black man who also grew up in the rural South, I have always been inspired by Reverend Jackson. He represented many things.
One, he represented that Democrats can be central to their -- be true to their Christian values and fight the fight that -- with the challenges that this country and our community face.
But he also is a friendly reminder that progress has not been --is never permanent. And that's why his fight for economic justice, that's why his fight for basic decency as black Americans and as black people has always been a centerpiece of our community, particularly when it comes to politics in this country.
BROWN: Tell us a little bit more about how growing up in the Jim Crow South during segregation shaped Reverend Jesse Jackson and his politics.
SEAWRIGHT: Well, certainly, I think it forced many in his generation to get off the sidelines to prevent some of us from being on the menu and to put us at the table.
[06:20:00]
And I think his work on economic justice, I think his fight for voting rights, and which we certainly face today. I think the challenge in health care. I think the fight for education. I think all those things were important to Reverend Jackson, but it was important to our community today.
Jesse Jackson represented hope and change before Barack Obama was introduced to the political scene. With his "keep hope alive" mantra, with his work, and with his ability to be able to speak to anyone about any single subject matter, as was discussed by your panel earlier, is a friendly reminder of what our North Star and guide should be as Democrats today.
BROWN: You talk about how he sort of set the stage for President Obama. As someone who has worked within Democratic circles, what do you think Jackson understood about mobilizing voters, especially those historically ignored?
SEAWRIGHT: Well, I think he understood. He understood that black folks over time will arguably be the most consequential voting bloc in America. And while voting was a must for us, it sometimes was a plus for others.
And that's why in his 1984 address, he talked about, if African American votes and other constituencies, then the tectonic plates in this country will shift.
And I think that has to be the attitude going forward and why black voters have always been the centerpiece of progress in this country. It also takes a coalition to be successful. I think his '84 and '88 campaigns are a friendly reminder that when
black Americans lead our country, our party, and the Constitution can succeed.
Only God has the sense of humor that he has, that Reverend Jackson's first political campaign was in 1984, and he died at the age of 84. Only God could have such a sense of humor that he would allow Reverend Jackson to transition while our country is transitioning, while our party's transitioning, and while some are trying to whitewash and sanitize history.
He allowed Reverend Jackson to trans -- to transition in Black History Month, so we are forced to elevate parts of our history that are uncomfortable that some may not want to talk about out loud.
BROWN: You talk about his coalition building. I mean, he is credited with building early multiracial coalitions in Democratic politics. How do you see his influence on the party's coalition today?
SEAWRIGHT: Well, certainly, I think he taught us that politics is a game of addition and multiplication, not subtraction or division.
I can't think of a constituency that Reverend Jackson would not have wanted to bring under the big tent we call the Democratic Party. I certainly cannot think of a constituency that he would ignore.
He talked about tractors in Iowa. He talked about his fight for equity and equality. Oceans of justice and rivers of fairness is what he said to me at one point in time, in my -- in my life about what the fight was all about.
But I also think that Reverend Jackson served as a friendly reminder that we cannot compromise on our values as Democrats, even though the competition may want us to, when it comes to issues that have challenged us for generations.
BROWN: We've been showing pictures of him with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was a protege of him. Talk to us about the role he played after that assassination and how important he was to your community.
SEAWRIGHT: Well, one of the things -- one of my last conversations with the late John Lewis in person, he said that they all had this spirit or this attitude it was, that everyone plays their role. While Dr. King played a pivotal role to the movement, so did John -- young John Lewis, so did Reverend Jackson.
And so, I think that Reverend Jackson's role in the movement perhaps was just as important as other people who may have had higher visibility and higher wattage within the movement and how they were elevated.
The difference is that Reverend Jackson's work in the movement lingered and continues to linger on into our generation. His hope, his inspiration, his attitude. Whereas some others in the movement, their work, their attitude and their -- their approach may have shifted a little bit in our modern-day, in our modern-day work. BROWN: Yes. He said, as we heard there in the CNN interview, there's
no future in hopelessness. And we remember that as we honor his legacy today.
Antjuan Seawright, thank you so much.
SEAWRIGHT: Thank you.
BROWN: Our breaking news coverage continues after the break on CNN THIS MORNING. Reverend Jesse Jackson has passed away. He had been hospitalized in recent months and was under observation for progressive supranuclear palsy. He was 84.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:28:50]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JESSE JACKSON: Announce to you this day my decision to seek the nomination of the Democratic Party for the presidency of the United States.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Back now to our breaking news. We are remembering the life and the legacy of Jesse Jackson.
He was a force for social justice over three eras: the Jim Crow period, the civil rights era, and the post-civil rights era that culminated with the election of Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Let's talk more about him with Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League.
You were on stage, Marc, with Jesse Jackson back in 2024, the DNC stage, when Jesse Jackson was honored by the party. How did Jackson change the Democratic Party and American politics more broadly?
MARC MORIAL, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE: Well, good morning and, certainly, prayers to the Jackson family.
Jesse's impact was tectonic. It was consequential.
One thing he did was he -- he brought the ethos. He brought the philosophy of civil rights into electoral politics. And when he did it, many people thought that his candidacy was simply going to be symbolic.
[06:30:00]
