Overview:
A letter from The Chicago Reporter's publisher Dr. Ebony Only announcing the passing of Reverend Jesse Jackson
We lost a giant today.
The Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr., died peacefully this morning surrounded by his family. He was 84 years old, and his absence will be felt in this city and in this country for a long time to come.
At The Chicago Reporter, we do not take lightly the relationship we were privileged to have with Reverend Jackson over the decades. He understood, at his core, what we have always tried to do: tell the truth about power, hold institutions accountable, and refuse to look away from the inequities that others would prefer to leave in the shadows. That is not a comfortable mission. It never has been. And Jesse Jackson never let comfort be an excuse for silence.
His life’s work was a sustained argument made in pulpits, on picket lines, in presidential debates, and in the streets of this very city, that justice is not a gift bestowed on those patient enough to wait for it. It must be demanded. He founded Operation PUSH on Chicago’s South Side in 1971 because he understood that economic empowerment and civil rights were not separate conversations. They were the same conversation. The Rainbow/PUSH Coalition carried that mission forward, building a coalition of people who had been told, in one way or another, that they did not quite belong at the center of American life.
Independent journalism and the movement for racial justice have always been tangled together in this country. From the earliest Black newspapers forward, the press that chose truth over access was often the only press willing to name what was happening. Reverend Jackson knew that. He supported outlets like ours not because we agreed with him on everything, but because he believed that journalism done with rigor and without fear of powerful people was essential to democracy. We were grateful for that support, and we did not take it for granted.
To the Jackson family, to Jackie, to Jesse Jr., to Jonathan, Santita, Yusef, and Ashley, we offer our deepest condolences. You shared your father with the world for more than sixty years. You gave him to marches and campaigns and negotiations and hospital rooms in cities that were not your own, so that the rest of us might live in a more just country. That is not a small sacrifice.
Reverend Jackson used to say that the doors of opportunity swing open not by magic, but because somebody pushed them. He spent his entire life pushing. The least we can do is walk through and then push harder ourselves.
Rest well, Reverend. Chicago loved you.