a lasting local impact by urging Chattanooga youth to pursue academic excellence
under the mantra, “I am somebody.”
As the nation mourns the passing of the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson Sr., who died on February 17, 2026, at the age of 84, the reflection in Chattanooga is not just on a two-time presidential candidate, but on a man whose “multiple purpose” reshaped the very streets of this city.
From the halls of the Bessie Smith Cultural Center to the historic blocks of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Rev. Jackson’s influence is viewed locally as a blueprint for tangible community improvement. For many in Chattanooga, his death marks the end of an era defined by the transition from protest to institutional economic power.
While national headlines focus on Rev. Jackson’s historic 1984 and 1988 presidential bids, Johnny Holloway, who headed the Chattanooga chapter of Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity) for 15 years, says those campaigns were only a fraction of the man.
“Everybody’s talking about him running for president two times, but that wasn’t the real Jesse Jackson,” said Holloway, a longtime leader in the local civil rights scene and a member of the Unity Group of Chattanooga. “He was trying to serve everybody and he had a tremendous program. He had a program that got thousands of jobs for Black people; he had a program for education; he had a program for the churches. He was multitasking.”
Holloway, who worked at the grassroots level to implement Rev. Jackson’s vision in Hamilton County, emphasized that Jackson’s true legacy was in “the thing that makes people better.”
In Chattanooga, the footprint of Rev. Jackson’s organization, Operation PUSH, is most visible on what was once Ninth Street. In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, local activists and Black clergy–championed by PUSH and the Unity Group–set their sights on renaming the historic heart of Chattanooga’s Black enterprise.
Despite initial resistance from city officials who balked at extending the name change into prime downtown real estate, the community’s persistence led to the official renaming of the thoroughfare to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. This victory was a local manifestation of Rev. Jackson’s philosophy of “economic reciprocity”–demanding that the city recognize the moral and economic value of its Black citizens.
Under Holloway’s leadership, the local PUSH chapter went beyond symbolic changes, establishing a breakfast program that fed hundreds of children daily and pressing for equity in local electoral processes to ensure meaningful participation for excluded communities.
Founded on Christmas Day in 1971, Operation PUSH grew out of Rev. Jackson’s work with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s (SCLC’s) “Operation Breadbasket.” The organization’s goal was to use the Black community’s influence as a massive consumer bloc to negotiate landmark “economic covenants” with corporations like Coca-Cola and Miller Brewing Company.
These agreements committed businesses to hiring Black supervisors and utilizing minority-owned suppliers–a strategy Rev. Jackson later brought to Silicon Valley.
Rev. Jackson’s programs, such as PUSH/Excel, also left a mark locally by encouraging Chattanooga’s youth to strive for academic excellence under the mantra, “I am somebody.”
Born in Greenville, South Carolina, and rising to prominence as a protégé of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rev. Jackson spent his final years battling progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). Even as his health declined, his organization remained a watchdog for voting rights and criminal justice reform.
In Chattanooga, Rev. Jackson is remembered as a man of action who proved that civil rights and economic justice are inseparable.
As the city reflects on his 84 years, the consensus among those who worked alongside him is clear: his mission was not just to change the occupant of the White House, but to change the lives of those on the “Laurel Streets” of America.
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The Life and Legacy of
Rev. Jesse L. Jackson
Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson spent more than six decades as one of America’s most recognizable moral voices—equal parts preacher, strategist, coalition-builder, negotiator, and presidential trailblazer. He rose from the segregated South to the center of the civil rights movement, then carried its aims into boardrooms, ballot boxes, and global diplomacy. In his later years, he continued to symbolize the unfinished work of democracy even as Parkinson’s disease—and later a rarer neurodegenerative condition—limited his mobility and speech.
Jackson publicly disclosed in 2017 that he had been living with Parkinson’s disease for years, framing the announcement not only as personal news but as a call to keep working and to support the search for better treatments and a cure.
In subsequent years, his health challenges deepened. His organization later confirmed he had progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a rare neurodegenerative condition that can severely affect movement, balance, eye control, and speech—symptoms that were visible in his final public period.
Jackson’s illness inevitably changed the cadence of his public role. Yet it also sharpened an enduring theme of his life: a leader’s dignity is not erased by disability, and a community’s obligation does not shrink when someone’s voice grows quieter.
The Rich Legacy He Leaves Behind
Jesse Jackson’s legacy is too large to reduce to a slogan, but a few themes hold:
• Civil rights as economic power: pushing the movement into jobs, contracts, and corporate accountability.
• Coalitions as strategy, not symbolism: insisting that political majorities are built—not found—by linking struggles.
• A transformed political horizon: demonstrating that Black national candidacies could be serious, competitive, and agenda-setting.
• Public moral language: bringing the rhythms of the pulpit into civic life, making dignity feel speakable—especially for people told they were invisible. Jackson’s greatest achievement may not have been one campaign or one negotiation, but the widening of American possibility—socially, politically, and psychologically. He made millions of people feel counted, and he pressured institutions to act like they believed it. (Compiled)