A civil rights icon has passed away. The Reverend Jesse Jackson has died. The famed civil rights activist, ordained Baptist minister and former presidential candidate was 84. Jackson had been dealing with a progressive neurodegenerative disease for the past decade. progressive supranuclear palsy is similar to Parkinson’s disease. The South Carolina native began pushing for civil rights as an undergraduate when he marched with Martin Luther King Jr. at Selma, Alabama in 1965.