US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson released from Chicago hospital, family says

WASHINGTON - U.S. civil rights leader Jesse Jackson was released on Monday from a Chicago hospital where he had been receiving medical care for at least 12 days, according to his family.

The 84-year-old Baptist minister, social activist, and former U.S. presidential candidate "remains in stable condition" following his discharge from Northwestern Memorial Hospital, his son and family spokesperson, Yusef Jackson, said in a statement issued through the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a Chicago-based political action organization the elder Jackson founded.

Jackson's hospital admission was announced by Rainbow PUSH on November 12, when he was described as being "under observation" for a degenerative neurological disorder called progressive supranuclear palsy, or PSP. Jackson was diagnosed in 2013 with Parkinson's disease, but his diagnosis was changed in April of this year to PSP, according to Monday's statement.

No further details about Jackson's condition or medical treatment were disclosed. But the family expressed thanks to friends and supporters for their prayers and visits.

"We bear witness to the fact that prayer works and would also like to thank the professional, caring and amazing medical and security staff at Northwestern Hospital," Jackson's son said. "We humbly ask for your continued prayers through this precious time."

Jackson has been at the forefront of the U.S. civil rights movement since the 1960s, joining the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as a young protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and was present when King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968.

Some two decades later, as an outspoken critic of the Republican President Ronald Reagan, Jackson mounted a Democratic primary bid for the White House in 1984 but finished in third place. He ran for president once more in 1988 but failed again to clinch the party's nomination, placing second. REUTERS