(Reuters) – U.S. civil rights leader Jesse Jackson has been admitted to hospital for an injury suffered while attending a meeting at Howard University, officials of the historically Black college said on Monday.
Jackson, 80, has been a leader of the U.S. civil rights movement since the mid-1960s and was with Martin Luther King when he was assassinated in 1968.
“We can confirm that Rev. Jackson was taken to the hospital by a university administrator,” the university, based in the U.S. capital, said on Twitter https://bit.ly/3GIMomj.
Broadcaster CNN said the results of Jackson’s medical tests proved normal and hospital officials had decided to keep him overnight for observation.
Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a group founded by Jackson, confirmed https://cnn.it/2ZS90jN to CNN that he was taken to hospital after he fell and hit his head on entering a campus building.
The group did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Jackson was hospitalized in August after testing positive for COVID-19. In 2017, he was diagnosed as having Parkinson’s disease.
The civil rights leader sought the Democratic presidential nomination twice in the 1980s, but fell short of becoming the first Black nominee of a major party.
(Reporting by Radhika Anilkumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
