The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a towering civil rights icon who fought alongside Martin Luther King Jr., negotiated global hostage releases, and shamed corporations for their lack of corporate diversity and failure to support voting rights, has died.

He was 84, a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, a Democratic presidential candidate and one of the world’s best-known Black activists.

Rev. Jackson was hospitalized on Nov. 12 following a lengthy battle with the progressive neuromuscular disease progressive supranuclear palsy, a condition similar to Parkinson’s disease.