Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease eight years ago, is stepping down from the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the influential Chicago-based civil rights organization he founded through its predecessor, Operation PUSH, more than 50 years ago.
After ceding day-to-day operations last year, Jackson, 81, is formally handing the reins to a successor who is expected to be announced this weekend at the annual Rainbow/PUSH convention, sources close to the organization said Friday.
Headquartered in a former temple in the Kenwood neighborhood on the South Side, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition has long been Jackson’s national advocacy platform to promote economic, educational and political change, including two groundbreaking campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s.
Now the organization’s mission, and its future, will be vested in new hands.
Born in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1941, Jackson came to national prominence in the civil rights movement during the 1960s after attending Chicago Theological Seminary. The city became his home for six decades, and the center of operations for the organizations he would lead and grow into a movement.
Jackson met the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965, and the following year became the head of the Chicago chapter of Operation Breadbasket, the economic arm of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference aimed at promoting employment for the Black community.
In the wake of Dr. King’s assassination in 1968, Jackson’s stature in the civil right movement grew, helping to fill the leadership void. In 1971, Jackson resigned from the SCLC and founded Operation PUSH in Chicago, expanding on the mission of education and economic empowerment for people of color.
Jackson ventured into national politics in the 1980s, delivering a stirring speech at the 1984 Democratic Convention and placing third in the nomination for president behind Walter Mondale and Gary Hart, garnering more than 3 million votes. In 1988, Jackson made a second bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, winning the Michigan primary before losing to the eventual candidate, Michael Dukakis.
In 1996, Jackson merged two of his initiatives, creating the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, which he continued to lead into the new millennium as an influential force in the civil rights movement.
Other civil rights leaders are already weighing in on Jackson’s legacy and his impending retirement.
“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,” Rev. Al Sharpton said in a statement Friday. “It was my honor, since my mother brought me to him at 12 years old to serve as the youth director for the New York chapter of Operation Breadbasket, down through the last decade, to have been a student and protégé of his.”
The annual Rainbow/PUSH convention runs through Wednesday, and will feature Vice President Kamala Harris as guest speaker on Sunday.
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