"In the middle of the 1984 presidential run, the writer James Baldwin offered what today still stands as a fitting epitaph. The writer told reporters that the presence of an African-American civil rights activist in the race had been a significant moment. Jackson's presence presents the American Republic with questions and choices it has spent all its history until this hour trying to avoid ... And nothing will ever again be what it was before."
"The veteran civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, who has died aged 84, made history when he stood for the White House in 1984 and 1988. He was not the first African American to seek the US presidency, but he was the first to mount a serious challenge, breaking through racial barriers, securing millions of votes and, at one point, becoming frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. His run opened the way for Barack Obama two decades later."
"Jackson felt he never fully received the credit he deserved for his various achievements. He was partly to blame. He alienated people who might otherwise have been drawn to him. For all his virtues, he could be vain, verbose and prone to exaggeration. His reputation was damaged and never fully recovered from embellishments and erratic behaviour in the aftermath of Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968."
Jesse Jackson died aged 84 after a life as a prominent civil rights activist and two historic presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988. He mounted the first sustained African-American challenge for the US presidency, winning millions of votes and at one point becoming a Democratic frontrunner, and his campaigns helped open the path for later Black candidates. The campaigns required courage amid memories of segregation and 1960s civil-rights struggles. Jackson struggled with personal flaws, including vanity, verbosity and tendencies to exaggerate, and his reputation suffered from embellishments and erratic behaviour after Martin Luther King’s assassination. He was born Jesse Burns in segregated Greenville, South Carolina.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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