Who is DNC guest Jesse Jackson? Former presidential candidate makes appearance

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. received a standing ovation when he arrived on the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Jackson, 82, waved and gave a thumbs-up from his wheelchair on stage but did not make a speech on Monday evening. In 2017, the iconic civil rights leader was diagnosed with Parkinson’s , a neurodegenerative disease. Last year, Jackson stepped down as president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Chicago-based organization fighting for progressive social change he founded in 1996.

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An ordained minister, he worked alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. During his time in politics, Jackson sought to broaden the umbrella of the Democratic party as an activist and presidential candidate.

Jesse Jackson ran for president in 1984

A little over a decade after Rep. Shirley Chisholm ran for the White House in 1972, the first Black woman to run a national campaign for the Democratic Party’s nomination, Jackson became the second Black American to seek a major-party nomination for president, running as a Democrat.

Despite some immediately dismissing Jackson as a nonviable candidate, he won five primaries and caucuses in 1984, becoming the first Black politician to win any major-party state primary contest. Jackson secured a majority of the Black vote and 18.2 percent of the total primary vote that year, but former Vice President Walter Mondale won the Democratic party’s presidential nomination.

Former President Ronald Reagan defeated Mondale in the 1984 general election.

Jackson did even better in 1988

Four years later, Jackson was seen as less of a political outsider when he ran his second presidential campaign.

At the time, Jackson received an endorsement from then-Mayor Bernie Sanders of Burlington, Vermont who later became the state’s independent U.S. senator and another progressive Democratic presidential candidate. Jackson’s 1988 campaign is credited with pushing Democrats left on issues still debated within the party today, including health care, social welfare spending, and U.S. relations with Israel.

In the 1988 Democratic presidential primary, he won 13 state contests but came in second to Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who clinched the party’s nomination.

Former President George H. W. Bush beat Dukakis in a landslide later that year.

Rachel Barber is a 2024 election fellow at USA TODAY, focusing on politics and education. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @rachelbarber_

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Who is DNC guest Jesse Jackson? Former presidential candidate makes appearance