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THURSDAY FEBRUARY 19, 2026
HUMANITY OWES HIM A DEBT OF ” GRATITUDE – Prime Minster Andrew Holness Civil rights giant Rev. Jesse Jackson dies at 84, leaving global legacy The United States and the wider African and Caribbean diaspora are mourning the death of civil rights titan Rev. Jesse Jackson, the influential activist, minister and two-time presidential candidate who died Tuesday at age 84 after a long battle with illness. Jackson, who had been living with progressive supranuclear palsy, passed away peacefully surrounded by family, according to a statement from the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the social justice organization he founded. His death marks the end of a decades-long career that placed him at the forefront of struggles for racial equality, voting rights and economic justice in the United States and beyond. Born Jesse Louis Burns on October 8, 1941,
in Greenville, South Carolina, Jackson rose to prominence as a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr. during the height of the U.S. civil rights movement. Over the following decades, he emerged as one of the most recognizable voices for African-American empowerment and social justice, establishing organizations that would later merge to form the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. Jackson’s influence expanded into electoral politics in the 1980s when he mounted groundbreaking campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination. His 1984 bid, initially dismissed by some as symbolic, ended with a third-place finish. Four years later, he ran again and finished second, helping to expand political participation among Black Americans and other marginalized communities and reshaping the Democratic Party’s coalition. He also served as Washington, D.C.’s shadow senator from 1991 to 1997 and hosted a public affairs program on CNN throughout the 1990s, using his platform to advocate for civil rights, labor rights and economic opportunity. Throughout his career, Jackson remained a continues on B3 – Jesse Jackson
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