U.S. civil rights leader Jesse Jackson in hospital with injury

[November 02, 2021]    (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.

Reverend Jesse Jackson stops by a demonstration outside the U.S. Capitol to protest the expiration of the federal moratorium on residential evictions in Washington, U.S., August 2, 2021. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

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)

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