Trailblazing civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson was hospitalized in Chicago on Wednesday due to symptoms from the neurodegenerative condition progressive supranuclear palsy.
His hospitalization was confirmed in a statement by the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a social justice organization founded by Jackson.
The 84-year-old Baptist minister and political figure has been battling the neurodegenerative condition for more than a decade, according to the statement. He was initially diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, but the PSP diagnosis was confirmed in April.
PSP is an atypical parkinsonian disorder, a group of neurodegenerative disorders that resemble Parkinson’s disease in some motor symptoms but typically have more a rapid progression and severe prognosis.
The rare brain disease results from a build-up of tau protein in areas of the brain that control body movement, causing progressively degenerative symptoms including trouble balancing, inability to aim the eyes, slurred speech, loss of walking and challenges swallowing.
Jackson was previously hospitalized in 2021 for COVID-19 along with his wife.
The civil rights leader was born in 1941 in segregated Greenville, S.C., and rose to prominence alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s.
He advocated for corporations to hire more Black Americans through Operation PUSH and founded the Rainbow Coalition in the 1980s to unite marginalized groups and working-class voters around shared goals of social, economic and political justice as well as greater political representations. He was the first Black presidential candidate to attract major national support, winning 3.5 million votes in 1984 and 7 million in 1988.
