Civil Rights icon Jesse Jackson left an indelible mark on America
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What impact did Jesse Jackson have on civil rights activism?
We need not ease back into the uncivilized era of fighting to be a superior race. That is a contradiction in terms because there is but one race, the human race.
Jesse Jackson spent decades as a public figure, turning his moral convictions into public action. Jackson was a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, a Democratic presidential candidate, and one of the world's best known Black activists. Following a lengthy illness, Jesse Jackson died earlier this week on the morning of Tuesday, February 17th. He was 84 years old. Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt.
How did Jesse Jackson's early experiences shape his activism?
I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Friday, February 20th, 2026. For more on the life and legacy of the late Jesse Jackson, now joined by USA Today National Correspondent Trevor Hughes. Trevor, thank you so much for joining me.
Yeah, good to be here.
As you wrote, Trevor, Jesse Jackson was a towering civil rights icon. His civil rights story really begins at a public library in Greenville, South Carolina. Tell me about the Greenville Eight.
This is one of those stories that feels like it's from the ancient past, but it is not. This was 1960. Jesse Jackson was home from college. He was studying divinity, and he needed a book from the library. Now, at the time, segregation was legal under the Jim Crow laws, and the book he needed was in the white only library. He tried to borrow it. They wouldn't let him, even though it was just steps away. They told him to come back maybe a week later, and they would have it available. So with a few friends, he did something audacious. They walked into the white library, started reading books. They sat down and read books. They weren't talking. They weren't hassling people. They just sat and read. And it so offended the community that these young men and women were arrested for violating the law.
It ultimately led to the desegregation of the public libraries in their community. But it is really one of the first places that he got his start in civic activism.
Like the late Representative John Lewis, who died in 2020, Jesse Jackson's civil rights legacy is tied to Martin Luther King Jr. What was Jackson's connection to MLK?
The two men came up very much at the same time. They were peers. And Jesse Jackson, after sort of leaving college, moved to Chicago to help run operations for Dr. King. There was a protest organized. They called it Operation Breadbasket. But the two men were very much linked. And when Dr. King was killed, Jesse Jackson really took up that mantle, was present all over this country as sort of this civil rights conscience of America.
Jesse Jackson was a trailblazer in American politics. He ran for president in 1984 and 1988. Trevor, how did those campaigns shape coalition politics?
You know, I think people started to realize that there was a very powerful constituency here. Jesse Jackson worked to build this coalition. His group was called the Rainbow Push Coalition. And so he really helped lay the foundations for the modern Democratic Party, which is built in bringing together disparate groups of people who are perhaps less specifically identified with one kind of belief or one kind of worldview. And so he really spoke to a broad variety of people who cared about civil rights, about racial justice, about economic justice, because that was a huge part of what he pushed for.
And of course, he didn't shy away from engaging in foreign politics. What can you share here regarding his work in negotiating the release of American hostages?
It's easy to forget because he has kind of fallen out of the public view over the last few years because of his long illness. But Jesse Jackson was such a powerfully known name. And so he actually was able to travel the world and release a number of hostages in Syria and then also in Cuba. You know, he was not of the government, but he was in some ways of the American people. And that apparently was very successful.
Presidents on both sides of the aisle held Jackson in high esteem, including current President Donald Trump. What were his remarks following the passing of Jesse Jackson?
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