Jesse Jackson ‘proved that a black man could be a serious contender for the White House’

Charismatic US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, an eloquent Baptist minister raised in the segregated South who became a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr and twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, has died at age 84, his family said in a statement on Tuesday. Despite never winning the nomination, Jackson did something arguably more significant – registering millions of new voters and proving that a black man could be a serious contender for the White House, FRANCE 24’s Fraser Jackson said, reporting from Washington.