Eva Deschamps / August 22, 2021
The Reverend Jesse Jackson, a pastor and iconic civil rights activist in the United States, was hospitalized after testing positive for Covid-19, despite being vaccinated, his representatives announced Saturday.
Jesse Jackson, 79, and his wife Jacqueline Jackson, 77, are being treated at Northwestern Hospital in Chicago, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, which the reverend chairs, said in a statement posted on Facebook. Doctors are currently monitoring their condition. Anyone who has been in contact with either of them in the last five or six days should follow the guidelines of the government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the organization added.
Companion of Martin Luther King in the 1960s, talented orator, this Baptist pastor born on October 8, 1941 in an America still marked by segregation has run twice in the Democratic primary for the U.S. presidential in the 1980s, remaining for a long time the most famous black personality to have attempted the race for the White House until Barack Obama. He was vaccinated against the coronavirus last January, and had then urged reluctant African-Americans to be vaccinated. The announcement of his hospitalization comes as the United States, the country most bereaved by Covid-19 with more than 620,000 deaths, is experiencing a new outbreak of infections caused by the Delta variant. Jesse Jackson had announced in 2017 that he was suffering from Parkinson's disease. Last July, he had received from the hands of French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris the insignia of Commander of the Legion of Honor.