SR0618 104TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

SR0618 LRB104 20858 MST 34496 r

SENATE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, Rev. Jesse Jackson, a towering civil rights icon who battled alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., negotiated global hostage releases, and shamed corporations for their lack of corporate diversity and failure to support voting rights, passed away on February 17, 2026 at the age of 84; and

WHEREAS, Rev. Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1941 and attended a segregated high school; and

WHEREAS, Rev. Jackson's rise to prominence began in 1960 at the age of 18 when he and seven other men were arrested for protesting segregation at their town's public library; and

WHEREAS, Rev. Jackson, by 1965, had marched alongside Dr. King and others from Selma to Montgomery to push for Black voting rights, and by 1967, he was running operations for Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Chicago, the city that would become his home; and

WHEREAS, Rev. Jackson was just feet away from Dr. King when he was assassinated in 1968; and

WHEREAS, Rev. Jackson guided the SCLC's Operation Breadbasket use of boycotts and public attention to pressure companies to hire more Black workers; and

WHEREAS, Rev. Jackson earned his divinity degree after being ordained a minister in 1968; and

WHEREAS, Rev. Jackson traveled to Syria in 1983 to negotiate the release of an American pilot shot down over Lebanon, and the next summer, he negotiated the release of 22 Americans and 26 political prisoners from Cuba after meeting with former dictator Fidel Castro; and

WHEREAS, Rev. Jackson founded the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and ran for president as a Democrat in 1984 and 1988, energizing and registering millions of Black voters; and

WHEREAS, Rev. Jackson opposed the pending invasion of Iraq in 1990 and negotiated the release of hundreds of people who Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had threatened to use as human shields, and then in 1999, he won the release of three U.S. POWs during the Kosovo War; and

WHEREAS, Rev. Jackson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000 by President Bill Clinton for his decades of work to make the world a better place; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE ONE HUNDRED FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we mourn the passing of Rev. Jesse Jackson and extend our sincere condolences to his family, friends, and all who knew and loved him; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to the family of Rev. Jackson as a symbol of our deepest sympathy.