Jesse Jackson Is Dead

“The Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose impassioned oratory and populist vision of a “rainbow coalition” of the poor and forgotten made him the nation’s most influential Black figure in the years between the civil rights crusades of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the election of Barack Obama, died on Tuesday. He was 84,” the New York Times reports.

“Mr. Jackson picked up the mantle of Dr. King after his assassination in 1968 and ran for president twice, long before Mr. Obama’s election in 2008. But he never achieved either the commanding moral stature of Dr. King or the ultimate political triumph attained by Mr. Obama.”

Washington Post: “Rev. Jackson’s oratorical style, like the civil rights movement, was rooted in the Black churches of the South. He would begin slowly, in an almost conversational tone, and gradually build to a crescendo that left some listeners in tears.”