WASHINGTON - Veteran US civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson died Tuesday, his family said in a statement. He was 84.
"His unwavering belief in justice, equality, and love uplifted millions, and we ask you to honour his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by," Jackson's family said.
Jackson had a three-pronged career of civil rights, liberal missions and political activism, and his two White House bids in the 1980s helped lay the groundwork for the election of America's first Black president two decades later.
As a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s, the longtime Baptist minister expanded the space for African Americans on the national stage for more than six decades.
Jackson was present for many consequential moments in the long battle for racial justice in the United States.
He was with King in Memphis in 1968 when the civil rights leader was slain; openly wept in the crowd as Barack Obama celebrated his 2008 presidential election; and stood with George Floyd's family in 2021 after a court convicted an ex-police officer of his murder.
It was Jackson's presidential runs -- and one 1988 speech -- that caught many Americans' attention and ensured that African American issues became fundamental to the Democratic Party platform.
His debut White House campaign supported a massive jobs expansion, ending the nation's "war on drugs" and its mandatory minimum sentences for drug users, and improving equality for women and minorities.
Jackson finished third in the 1984 Democratic primaries -- behind former vice president Walter Mondale and runner-up Gary Hart -- making him the most successful black presidential candidate until Obama.
He became a prominent advocate for ending apartheid in South Africa, and in the 1990s served as presidential special envoy for Africa for Bill Clinton.
Missions to free US prisoners took him to Syria, Iraq and Serbia.
But he ruffled some feathers in 2005 when he met in Venezuela with Hugo Chavez, and then spoke at the strongman's funeral in 2013.
Jackson announced in 2017 that he was battling Parkinson's disease, and he began curtailing his public engagements.