CHICAGO: American civil rights leader Jesse Jackson announced Friday that he has the degenerative neurological disease Parkinson's. "After a battery of tests, my physicians identified the issue as Parkinson's disease, a disease that bested my father." Jackson has been a leader in the American Civil Rights movement since the 1960s, when he marched with Martin Luther King Jr, and helped fundraise for the cause. He was the most prominent African American to run for the US presidency – with two unsuccessful attempts to capture the Democratic Party nomination in the 1980s – until Obama's ascendance. An unequivocal liberal, Jackson founded an organisation in the 1980s that advocated for equal rights for African Americans, gays, and women.

Source: New Strait Times November 18, 2017 01:07 UTC