00:01Charismatic U.S. civil rights leader Jesse Jackson has died at age 84, his family said
00:06in a statement on Tuesday, February 17. Jackson was an eloquent Baptist minister raised in
00:11the segregated South who became a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr. during the turbulent
00:16civil rights movement of the 1960s. He twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination.
00:22At the 1988 Democratic Convention, Jackson electrified the crowd with his speech saying,
00:27America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth. The Jackson family said,
00:33Our father was a servant leader, not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless,
00:38and the overlooked around the world. He served as Democratic President Bill Clinton's special
00:43envoy to Africa in the 1990s. Jackson was instrumental in securing the release of Americans held in Syria,
00:49Cuba, Iraq, and Serbia. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2017. Jackson continued
00:55his activism later in life, condemning the police killing of George Floyd in 2020.
Comments