Dahlia Jackson

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Dahlia gave her time freely to the church and her community, working on fundraising efforts for families in need.

Dahlia Jackson, a devoted mother, grandmother, and registered nurse whose career of service spanned decades, died on Tuesday, September 1, 2026.  She was 83.  

Dahlia was born on January 25, 1943, in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, to Pierre Emile Cerge and Milbrey Cerge. She came to New York as a teenager, and the city became her home for the rest of her life.   

She graduated from the Lehman College School of Nursing and went on to a long and rewarding career in nursing. She served as Nursing Director at Morningside House Nursing Home and was heavily involved in public health, providing visiting nursing care in the community. She also worked as a registered nurse at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, where she cared for patients for several decades.  Nursing suited her.  She had the steadiness people want at a bedside and the warmth they remember long afterwards.

On July 1, 1961, she married Jesse Jackson, Sr at Our Lady of Nativity in the Bronx, New York. They shared 50 years of marriage until his death from pancreatic cancer, July 7, 2011.

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She believed that people who had something ought to share it, and she lived that belief quietly and consistently.

Dahlia gave her time freely to the church and her community, working on fundraising efforts for families in need.  She believed that people who had something ought to share it, and she lived that belief quietly and consistently.  

Her greatest joy was her grandchildren.  She helped raise them, and she was present for the ordinary days as much as the milestones — homework at the kitchen table, rides to practice, a hot meal waiting.  She was also a lifelong reader, rarely without a book, and she passed that appetite for reading on to the children who grew up around her.  

She is survived by her three children, Jeanette Jackson-Gaines, Jesse Jackson, Jr., and Joey Jackson; her sons and daughters-in-law, Fred D. Gaines Jr., Yasmin Rasheed, and Katia Jackson; her five grandchildren, Hakeem Gaines, Imani Gaines, Phillip Barone, Justin Jackson, Jonathan Jackson; her three great-grandchildren Elijah Gaines, Tamara Gaines, and Alayah Barone; her sister, Dorene Rembert, and her  brother, Derrick Washington; and a wide circle of extended family, church members, and friends.  She was predeceased by her brothers, Dalton Cerge and Emile Cerge, Jr.; her beloved grandmother, Rosalia Esther McBean, affectionately known as Mama; and Mama’s two sons, Eldred McBean and Donald Audian.

The family will be receiving friends on Thursday, September 10, 2026 from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Mangano Family Funeral Home, 1701 Deer Park Avenue, Deer Park, New York.