healthcare - Jesse Jackson boosts CME Church nursing home project in Memphis

The First Episcopal District of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church hosted Jackson at an event at Mt. Olive CME Cathedral to support fundraising for the Collins Chapel Health and Rehabilitation Center at 409 Ayers.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, in Memphis on the eve of the 49th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination at the Lorraine Motel, cited efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act as an example of "a kind of down feeling" in America.

Jackson's agenda last week included giving a keynote speech on health care to boost fundraising for a $3 million renovation underway to make a nursing home of the former Collins Chapel Hospital in Memphis, which served African Americans during the Jim Crow era.

Speaking to The Commercial Appeal editorial board, the founder of the Chicago-based Rainbow PUSH Coalition said the civil rights era was more optimistic than today, citing actions by President Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress.

"Dr. King's last effort was a one-big-tent America, all under one big tent, none in the margins and the floor beneath which no one would fall," Jackson said.

"Now you have the richest cabinet ever assembled," he said. "Its first issue is to attack easy access to voting, by supporting the (U.S. Supreme Court decision of Shelby County, Alabama, versus Holder), to attack access to health care for 24 million people and give $800 billion back to those who need it the least."

The First Episcopal District of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church hosted Jackson at an event at Mt. Olive CME Cathedral to support fundraising for the Collins Chapel Health and Rehabilitation Center at 409 Ayers.

Formerly known as the Collins Chapel Connection Hospital, its roots date to 1910 and after fundraising its then-new hospital opened in about 1955 in still racially segregated Memphis. Desegregation and other issues led to closings of the hospital and later a nursing home in the 1970s and 1980s, according to newspaper stories.

The church is renovating the facility to become a 28-bed Medicare skilled nursing facility will include dialysis and a high-acuity respiratory rehabilitation program.

The state Health Services and Development Agency originally approved the project in 2012, but has granted extensions due to financing issues, the agency reported. Construction began in July 2016 with November as the target for completion.

The First Episcopal District of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church hosted Jackson at an event at Mt. Olive CME Cathedral to support fundraising for the Collins Chapel Health and Rehabilitation Center at 409 Ayers.