Left-leaning civil rights leader Jesse Jackson dies at 84

Jackson died peacefully on Tuesday surrounded by family, according to a family statement. He was known for civil rights and left-leaning activism and was a protege of Martin Luther King Jr. Then-President Bill Clinton awarded Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000, according to Jackson’s official biography.

Jackson directed the Chicago branch of King’s Operation Breadbasket program, which focused on improving economic opportunities for black people. Jackson split off in 1971 after King’s death and founded his own similar civil rights group, Operation PUSH, according to his biography. Jackson later expanded his activism to include all those he deemed oppressed, including homosexuals, founding the National Rainbow Coalition in 1984. The group, which later merged with Operation PUSH to form the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, sought affirmative action policies and opposed Ronald Reagan’s cuts to domestic welfare programs, according to its website. While Jackson originally strongly opposed abortion, he later changed his position in the ’80s.

Jackson is survived by his wife Jacqueline, their five children, his daughter from another relationship, and several grandchildren, according to his family.

What else was Jackson known for? He ran unsuccessfully for president in 1984 and 1988, and served as the District of Columbia’s shadow senator in the ’90s. He also served as a negotiator in several international hostage situations, including assisting in securing the release of American soldiers captured in Kosovo in 1999, according to his biography.

Jackson was an ordained minister, though he broke off studies at Chicago Theological Seminary in the mid-’60s to work full time in the civil rights movement. He was ordained by a minister in 1968 and eventually earned his degree from the seminary in 2000, according to his biography.

Dig deeper: Read Lauren Smyth’s obituary of actor Robert Duvall, who died Sunday.