Jesse Jackson will soon exit his role as leader of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a Chicago-based civil rights organization he founded in 1971.
A spokesperson for Jackson’s son, U.S. Rep. Jonathan Jackson, confirmed the news Friday, according to the Associated Press.
Jackson will announce his retirement Sunday during the organization’s annual convention, Rep. Jackson told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Before former president Barack Obama, the elder Jackson was the most successful Black United States presidential candidate. He won 13 primaries and caucuses for the Democratic nomination in 1988. Jackson’s son said his father’s “mark upon history” will be his relentless fight for civil rights.
Jackson will turn 82 in October, and he has continued his activity on the civil rights front despite the onset of Parkinson’s disease, a gallbladder surgery in 2021, COVID-19 and a 2021 fall that resulted in a head injury.
He attended the memorial for George Floyd in 2020 after Floyd was murdered by a white police officer. The blatant display of police brutality sparked a wave of protests in 2020, bringing the United States to reckon with its history of racism.
Al Sharpton, president and founder of the National Action Network considered Jackson his mentor, saying: “The resignation of Rev. Jesse Jackson is the pivoting of one of the most productive, prophetic, and dominant figures in the struggle for social justice in American history.”
Jackson’s legacy dates to his work on the staff of Martin Luther King Jr. He formed Operation PUSH, named People United to Save Humanity, after breaking from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1971. The organization, based on Chicago’s South Side, was later renamed Rainbow PUSH Coalition to recenter itself around fighting for minority rights as well as voter registration for communities of color.
The annual convention begins this weekend in Chicago.
