By Ty Tagami and Ernie Suggs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
11:10 p.m. Sunday, January 31, 2010
Famed civil rights leader and Atlanta legend Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery has been admitted to a hospital, but his condition is not serious, longtime friend and fellow civil rights leader Andrew Young said late Sunday.
Lowery, who last summer received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor, was scheduled to attend an African American achievement award ceremony Saturday, but didn't make it, Young said. "He was having shortness of breath and he didn't come to the Trumpet Awards last night."
Young said Lowery "has been in and out of the hospital before. I have not heard that it was serious. I think he was having some respiratory problems."
Local TV news station 11Alive reported that friends of Lowery said he was admitted to the intensive care unit of Emory Crawford Long Hospital, but that could not be confirmed.
A hospital spokesman, Lance Skelly, said patients can request anonymity, and if they do their names will not appear in a computer system.
"He's not in our system, so there's nothing else I can say about that right now," Skelly said.
Just over a year ago, Lowery spoke at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. The 88-year-old Lowery was a co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the signature civil rights group originally headed by Martin Luther King, Jr. Lowery was its president from 1977 to 1997.
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