Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson dies aged 84

The Rev Jesse L Jackson, a protege of the Rev Martin Luther King Jr and two-time presidential candidate who led the civil rights movement for decades after Rev King’s assassination, has died. He was 84.

Rev Jackson died on Tuesday surrounded by family, according to a statement posted online from the family.

As a young organiser in Chicago, Rev Jackson was called to meet Rev King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis shortly before Rev King was killed and he publicly positioned himself thereafter as Rev King’s successor.

Rev Jackson led a lifetime of crusades in the United States and abroad, advocating for the poor and underrepresented on issues from voting rights and job opportunities to education and health care.

He scored diplomatic victories with world leaders, and through his Rainbow/Push Coalition, he channelled cries for black pride and self-determination into corporate boardrooms, pressuring executives to make America a more open and equitable society.

And when he declared “I am somebody”, in a poem he often repeated, he sought to reach people of all colours.

“I may be poor, but I am Somebody; I may be young; but I am Somebody; I may be on welfare, but I am Somebody,” he said.

It was a message he took literally and personally, having risen from obscurity in the segregated south to become America’s best-known civil rights activist since Rev King.