Jesse Jackson’s life from Greenville to the national stage
By Nigel Robertson
Click here for updates on this story
GREENVILLE, South Carolina (WYFF) — Jesse Jackson, the longtime civil rights activist, Baptist minister, and two-time presidential candidate, has died, according to his family.
Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina, on Oct. 8, 1941, and attended racially segregated Sterling High School, where he was elected student class president and earned letters in baseball, football, and basketball.
In July 1960, Jackson helped change his hometown by joining the Greenville 8, a group of African American students who filed into the whites-only Greenville County Public Library, leading to its integration. His involvement in the civil rights movement had only just begun.
“Announce to you this day my decision to seek the nomination for the Democratic Party for the presidency of the United States of America,” Jackson said during his presidential campaign.
Before his presidential runs in 1984 and 1988, Jackson joined Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma in 1965 during the historic marches. He was also present when Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968.
Jackson graduated from college with a degree in sociology and attended Chicago Theological Seminary, where he was ordained by the minister of a Chicago church. He resigned from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, founded by Dr. King, and went on to create the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
The 1970s saw Jackson traveling the world, working to bring change to a number of issues. By 1984, he became the second African American to make a national run for president, following Shirley Chisholm. Jackson received 3.5 million votes in 1984 and more than 7 million votes in 1988, finishing second in the primaries to Michael Dukakis.
Jackson married Jacqueline Brown in 1962, and they had five children. As his family grew, so did controversy, including accusations of overstating his presence at Dr. King’s assassination and having a child out of wedlock. He apologized for accusing Barack Obama of talking down to Black America.
His diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease came in 2017, and over the years, his presence on the national stage began to slow. In November 2025, he was hospitalized for progressive supranuclear palsy, a neurodegenerative condition he had been managing for more than a decade. Despite these challenges, Jackson’s standing in history endures from his Greenville roots.”
Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.