Also Read | India is free but not equal: Jesse JacksonHis daughter, Santita Jackson, confirmed that Jackson died at home, surrounded by family. “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,” Jackson intoned. 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 King. Arriving on the historically Black campus in 1960 just months after students there launched sit-ins at a whites-only diner, Jackson immersed himself in the blossoming Civil Rights Movement. Jackson called his time with King “a phenomenal four years of work.”Jackson was with King on April 4, 1968, when the civil rights leader was slain at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

Source: The Hindu February 18, 2026 00:52 UTC