Rev Jesse Jackson (1941-2026): Preacher, protester, prophet

Tributes have hailed him as a civil rights titan. But the most important word before Jesse Jackson’s name was “Rev”, says Chine McDonald. His life embodied a tradition in which preaching and political protest were never meant to be separate

Since the death of civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson, he has been called a “giant among men”, a “titan”, and an “icon”. But to many, one of the most distinctive things about him was that he was called: “Rev”.

The “Reverend” title for him was an important one. Like Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Rev Al Sharpton, and others of that iconic group of civil rights campaigners, Rev Jesse Jackson was both a pastor and a politician. These giants of political rhetoric, imagination and prophetic voice stood within the Black church tradition that birthed the modern civil rights movement. With the rousing oratory they honed from the pulpits, they delivered sermons as political strategies, and their political strategies as sermons. Their compelling, powerful and moving use of language made people feel something rather than left them cold. Scripture underpinned their social policy, they saw justice as an integral part of the Christian vision of the world turned right way up.

Many of Rev Jackson’s enslaved ancestors would have gathered together to sing songs of freedom and read the Bible nestled under trees in hush harbours away from the gaze of their white ‘owners’. Here the negro spirituals were born as they read of how God saw them, of how their freedom was possible, even while they were in chains. They read in the pages of scripture a liberating vision of human flourishing.