The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a highly-influential political civil rights activist, former presidential candidate and friend and partner of Martin Luther King Jr., has died at 84.
Jackson's activist work started in 1960, when he fought to desegregate a library in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. A few years later, King tapped Jackson to lead Operation Breadbasket, a movement to improve economic conditions for Black Americans.
Jackson's role in advancing the civil rights movement continued after King’s assassination. He created the Rainbow PUSH Coalition (People United to Save Humanity) — a nonprofit civil rights organization based in Chicago.
His work frequently brought him to Austin, including speaking to former Rep. Barbara Jordan's class at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.
In the mid-1990s, Jackson led a march to the Texas Capitol to protest attempts from state and federal leaders to eliminate affirmative action, according to newspaper archives from the Austin American-Statesman. The rally took place less than a year before affirmative action for Black and Mexican American students was effectively banned at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Law in the case of Hopwood v. Texas.
Jackson continued advocating for affirmative action in Austin into the 2000s. He delivered speeches to thousands of Austin residents at Waterloo Park, Huston-Tillotson University and hosted youth voting rallies at local high schools.
In fall of 2003, Jackson sat down with the Austin Police Department to discuss repairing its relationship with the Black community after Jessie Owens, a 20-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by a white police officer.
In 2021, Jackson rallied alongside Willie Nelson, Beto O’ Rourke, and other Texas leaders in a four-day long protest against the Legislature’s attempts to suppress voting rights in the state.
