Prayers Up: Rev. Jesse Jackson and His Wife, Jacqueline, Hospitalized With COVID-19

Rev. Jesse Jackson and his wife, Jacqueline, were admitted to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago according to a statement from his organization Rainbow PUSH Coalition (RPC) on Saturday.

NBC News reports that the 79-year-old civil rights leader and his wife, 77, are closely monitored by their doctors. The statement did not disclose their current conditions. The statement urged anyone who has had contact with the couple in the past five or six days to isolate according to CDC guidelines.

The reverend has been a giant in the civil rights community since the 1960s and was a protégé of the late Martin Luther King Jr. According to their website, in 1996, Jackson founded the Rainbow Push Coalition in Chicago, a merger of his two nonprofit organizations, to advocate for international human and civil rights.

He has also been vocal in the modern civil rights movement despite his Parkinson’s diagnosis in 2017. Most recently, he was arrested in Washington, D.C., earlier this month and in Phoenix, Ariz., in July, according to ABC News.

Rev. Jackson has also undergone a few health complications in the past year.

From NBC:

In January, the civil rights leader was admitted to Northwestern for “abdominal discomfort” and underwent gallbladder surgery. Jackson spent three weeks at a rehabilitation center for a “short period of exercise and therapy,” because of his Parkinson’s disease, according to Rainbow PUSH.

Jackson has been seeking outpatient care for more than five years for Parkinson’s, a chronic neurological disorder that causes movement difficulties.

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Jackson was vaccinated during a press conference at Roseland Community Hospital in January, according to CBS News. He received his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine while urging African Americans, especially the elderly, to get their shots.