USCMO Laments the Passing of Civil Rights Icon Rev. Jesse Jackson
Jackson, First Presidential Candidate to Address American Muslim Community
(Washington, D.C. 2/17/2026) – The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), America’s umbrella group of Muslim associations, mourns the passing of the Rev. Jesse Jackson today, who led the U.S. Civil Rights Movement for three decades as the protégé of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after the latter’s assassination in 1968.
American Muslims also remember the Rev. Jesse Jackson as a faithful friend, a societal ally, and the first major U.S. political and public figure to formally address the American Muslim community as the hottest presidential candidate in 1988.
Despite fierce negative lobbying, a threatening media publicity storm, and a breakneck public appearance schedule, defiant presidential candidate Rev. Jackson faced down the intense pressure campaign to keep him from speaking to thousands of Muslims at the Islamic Society of North America’s 25th Annual Convention in Indianapolis.
Singlehandedly, he did what no high-profile U.S. public figure before him had ever done. He focused the brightest national spotlight on America’s then “invisible” Muslim community, showing that Muslims – in their natural, multiplex composition – were America’s most vibrant homegrown, deep-rooted, and developing expression of a true rainbow coalition.
A gifted orator, Rev. Jackson had the courage of his deep faith-convictions. He became the most outspoken and eloquent moral voice in the nation for justice and equality, perfectly described as a ministry of “poetry and spiritual power in the public square.”
Rev. Jackson’s call for freedom and equality resonated well beyond America, becoming a crucial U.S. expression in the tremendous harmonic that eventually shook down the apartheid walls of South Africa, campaigning for an end to apartheid, and especially for American disinvestment from the apartheid economy along with the retraction of its economic support from crucial international institutions.
The connection and similarity between South Africa’s apartheid regime and that of the Israelis in Palestine was not lost on Rev. Jackson. In a famous 1985 interview, he addressed exactly this.
“There is a substantial awareness [in the African American community] of [the similarities between black South African life under apartheid and Palestinian life in the occupied territories]. We understand life under occupation because we’ve been occupied. We understand the violent nature of occupation. Those who would fight against the occupation here would be called militants. Those who would fight against the occupation there would be called terrorists. The fact is, as long as you have an occupier-occupied relationship, you have a violent structure.”
Rev. Jackson did not simply talk about the need for equality and inclusion, more than anyone in U.S. political history to date, he proactively sought to force the political enfranchisement of the Arab and Muslim communities. In his first run for president, Jackson shocked both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the American political establishment by tapping Arab American James Zogby as his deputy campaign manager.
“It is without exaggeration to say that the path to Arab American political empowerment began with Rev. Jackson’s improbable but momentous 1984 presidential campaign. His slogan that year was: “Our time has come.” It was interpreted by some as being directed at Black Americans. But Arab Americans embraced it as their own call to empowerment. Four decades later, in communities across the country, we see a new generation building on the progress that has been made—still growing and prospering, and making it clear that “Our time is now.”
It is with sorrow we mark the passing of Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson today. But we memorialize him also with the hope that he inspired in us for the possibility of a future of freedom, fairness, and equality in our nation and world.
Yet we also mark his passing to the mercy of God with the realization of the life-example he set for us all – namely, to nurture the personal courage to speak the truth out loud, to work undaunted and tirelessly for equality, and to sacrifice with the love of humanity necessary to birth the stated vision of our nation, with liberty and justice for all.
We condole with the family, friends, and loved ones of Rev. Jesse Jackson in their great loss, and so too do we mourn with our nation. He returns to the Hand of the All-Just and to a Day when the truthful shall benefit from their truthfulness.
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