Jesse Jackson, civil rights leader and US presidential hopeful, dead at 84

US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson has died at the age of 84. 

Mr Jackson, who died on Tuesday, local time, was a 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. 

He was the first Black man in the US to launch a nationwide presidential campaign. 

"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 said in a statement. 

Jackson, an inspirational orator and long-time Chicagoan, was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2017.

He advocated for the rights of Black Americans and other marginalised communities dating to the turbulent civil rights movement of the 1960s spearheaded by mentor King, a Baptist minister and towering social activist.

Jackson weathered a spate of controversies but remained America's pre-eminent civil rights figure for decades.

He ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, attracting Black voters and many white liberals, but fell short of becoming the first Black major party White House nominee. Ultimately, he never held elective office.

Jackson founded the Chicago-based civil rights groups Operation PUSH and the National Rainbow Coalition and served as Democratic President Bill Clinton's special envoy to Africa in the 1990s. 

He was also instrumental in securing the release of a number of Americans and others held overseas in places including Syria, Cuba, Iraq and Serbia.