(FILES) The Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks celebrating the life of singer Aretha Franklin at her father's church , New Bethel Baptist, during a Sunday morning service in Detroit, Michigan on August 19, 2018. Veteran US civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson died on February 17, 2026, his family said in a statement. He was 84. (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP)
There were probably two highlights of Jesse Jackson’s life. The first was watching Nelson Mandela sworn in at the Union Building as the first president of a democratic South Africa in May 1994.
The second was in 2008 when, with tears in his eyes, he celebrated Barack Obama as the first black president of the United States.
His was a life-long struggle against racial discrimination and for human rights – a struggle which cost his friend, mentor and hero, Martin Luther King Jnr, his life.
Like King, he dreamed the same dream: “Some day we’ll all be free.”
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Jackson was the man many white Americans – as well as conservatives across the world – loved to hate for his embrace of countries and regimes defined as anti-Western.
He was one of the loudest voices, for decades, in the anti-apartheid movement and always felt he had a special, visceral connection with South Africa and Africa as a whole.
He never transitioned into the foreground of US politics, though, having failed in two attempts to win the presidency, although it was said he was an influence in getting black voters behind Obama.
Jesse Jackson will always be remembered as one of the great political activists of the 20th century.
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