Rev. Jesse Jackson, the black leader who sought to build a “rainbow coalition” for America’s future but struggled to include Jews in it, died at 84.
For American Jews, Jackson’s use of an anti-Semitic epithet, criticism of Israel and association with the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan during his first presidential run in 1984 proved hard to overcome, even as he apologized in part.
Born in the Jim Crow South and educated as a Baptist minister in Chicago, Jackson emerged as a purveyor of a hopeful vision of racial inclusion and economic uplift in the years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., with whom he had worked.
His group, Operation PUSH , sponsored economic boycotts that won commitments to minority hiring.
Jackson negotiated the freedom of US hostages abroad, including in Syria and Cuba in 1984.
He ran for president in 1984 and 1988. His second campaign, drove a dramatic expansion in the number of black registered voters.
Some in his own community accused him of caring more about the concerns of affluent African-Americans than about the poverty afflicting the majority of black people in the US; others charged him with profiting personally off of his advocacy.
He broke bridges with American Jews, who had played a prominent role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
In 1979, he met in Lebanon with PLO terrorist leader Yasir Arafat.
Jackson also visited Israel during the same trip, but two Jewish members of the delegation — including one who helped plan it after working with Jackson to oppose a Nazi march in Skokie, Ill. — quit in protest partway through, saying that they had concluded that Jackson was a “dangerous man” who “cares not one bit about the Israeli point of view.”
In 1983, soon after announcing his first presidential campaign, the far-right Jewish Defense League announced a “Jews for Jackson” effort to thwart him. The announcement prompted Jackson’s first denial that he was antisemitic.
In 1984, Jackson admitted that he had used the term “Hymietown” to describe New York City in what he believed had been a private conversation with a reporter.
The American Jewish community never got past that slur for Jews.
Jackson first denied making the comments, including during a televised national debate, but then apologized in a speech at a synagogue in Manchester, NH, ahead of the first presidential primary.
“It’s human to err, divine to forgive,” he said.
“I appeal to you tonight as a Jewish community to find yourself in the rainbow coalition,” Jackson continued, “I categorically deny that I am either anti-Semitic or anti-Israel.”
Jackson declined to distance himself from Farrakhan, a longtime associate who had introduced him at a Chicago rally. After Farrakhan called Judaism a “gutter religion,” Jackson’s campaign denounced the comments but not Farrakhan himself.
Jackson endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and raised questions about US military aid to Israel, claiming that Israeli weapons were being used to maintain apartheid in South Africa.
Jackson became a wedge issue during the 1988 election, when Vice President George Bush suggested that Democrats were not forceful enough in condemning antiSemitism.
Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said Jackson had met privately with Jewish leadeers in an effort to mend fences. “It is a different Jackson in 1988 than in 1984,” ADL’s Abraham Foxman said at the time.
By the early 1990s, Jackson had made gains in building trust with segments of the Jewish community, speaking at synagogues and Jewish community forums and participating in Holocaust remembrance events. In July, 1992, he made two headlining speeches condemning hatred of Jews, at the Democratic national sonvention and to a World Jewish Congress meeting in Brussels.
In the World Jewish Congress speech, he condemned anti-Semitism, praised Zionism as a “liberation movement” and called for Jews and blacks to renew their joint fight against racism.
But Foxman said Jackson would still have to do more to convince him. “It is a record that has been marred by an insensitive view of Jewish history, the Holocaust, Zionism and the modern Jewish state, its government and their policies,” he said. “One speech to the Jewish community in the Palace of Congresses in Brussels will not repair it.”
Foxman said he would work with Jackson if Jackson chose to deliver similar comments before black audiences in the US.
In the late 1990s, Yeshiva University invited Jackson to speak on black-Jewish relations. YU President Norman Lamm praised him as a “leading, vibrant” activist who has “performed miracles in fostering racial harmony.”
Around the same time, Jackson participated in a vigil on behalf of Iranian Jews outside Park East Synagogue in New York City. Rabbi Marc Schneier, whose father Arthur is Park East’s rabbi, said following Jackson’s death, “I have lost a cherished friend.”
Jackson maintained personal relationships with other Jewish figures.
Following the death in 2021 of Robert Marx, a social justice advocate and leading Reform rabbi in Chicago who drew inspiration from his experiences marching with King, Jackson praised him as “the Jewish voice for justice.
“We prayed together, sang together and marched together. When Nazis marched in Skokie, we fought hate together. We have always been together. I love him so much. I miss him already.”
Following his death, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs said:
“It’s no secret that there were also very painful moments in Rev. Jackson’s relationship with the Jewish community, and he is a testament to engagement even when there are deep disagreements and pain. He went on to be a key ally to the Jewish community, underscoring the urgency of building strong, long-lasting alliances against bigotry wherever it exists.”
Jackson announced in 2017 that he had Parkinson’s disease and had been increasingly out of the public eye.
He shared a stage with Farrakhan at a memorial service for the singer Aretha Franklin in 2018 and traveled to Auschwitz in 2019 for a memorial service for the Roma victims of the Holocaust before making his last major public appearance in a wheelchair at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Jesse Jackson is survived by his wife Jacqueline; six children, including his son Jesse Jackson, Jr., who was elected to Congress in Illinois; and several grandchildren.
