US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson has died at the age of 84, the BBC reports.
Jackson died peacefully on Tuesday morning surrounded by his family, they say in a statement.
“Our father was a servant leader – not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” the Jackson family say.
Jackson fought for civil rights alongside Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s and was twice a candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988.
He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017 and was hospitalized for observation last November after being diagnosed with a degenerative condition.
