Jesse Jackson to step down as head of civil rights organisation Rainbow PUSH

The Rev Jesse Jackson plans to step down from leading the Chicago civil rights organisation Rainbow PUSH Coalition he founded in 1971, his son’s congressional office has said.

A spokesperson for US Rep Jonathan Jackson confirmed the long-time civil rights leader would be retiring from the organisation.

The elder Jackson, a civil rights leader and two-time presidential candidate, plans to announce his plan on Sunday during the organisation’s annual convention, Rep Jackson told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Jackson, who will be 82 in October, has remained active in civil rights in recent years despite health setbacks.

He announced in 2017 that he had begun outpatient care for Parkinson’s disease two years earlier. In early 2021, he had gallbladder surgery and later that year was treated for Covid-19 including a stint at a physical therapy-focused facility.

Jackson, a protege of Martin Luther King, broke with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1971 to form Operation PUSH — originally named People United to Save Humanity — a sweeping civil rights organisation based on Chicago’s South Side.

The organisation was later renamed the Rainbow PUSH Coalition with a mission ranging from encouraging corporations to hire more minorities to voter registration drives in communities of colour. Its annual convention is set for this weekend in Chicago.

Until Barack Obama’s election in 2008, Jackson was the most successful black candidate for the US presidency, winning 13 primaries and caucuses for the Democratic nomination in 1988.

Jackson has helped guide the modern civil rights movement on a wide variety of issues, including voting rights and education.

He stood with the family of George Floyd at a memorial for the black man murdered in 2020 by a white police officer, whose death forced a national reckoning with police brutality and racism. Jackson also participated in Covid-19 vaccination drives to battle hesitancy in black communities.

Al Sharpton, president and founder of the National Action Network, said in a statement that he had spoken to Jackson on Friday morning and “told him that we will continue to glean from him and learn from him and duplicate him in whatever our organisations and media platforms are. Because he has been an anchor for me and many others.”

Sharpton called Jackson his mentor, adding: “The resignation of Rev Jesse Jackson is the pivoting of one of the most productive, prophetic, and dominant figures in the struggle for social justice in American history.”