Born: July 11, 1892, Lexington, KY

Education: Fisk University, B.A., 1914, M.A., 1916; Columbia University, M.A., 1922; University of Chicago, Ph.D., 1937

Died: April 20, 1950, Petersburg, VA

A Virginia State College professor, Jackson led freedom struggles in the segregated South.

He promoted learning and teaching Negro history as well as political participation. His research pursued slaves and free blacks’ religious, social, and economic life and post-slavery progress, resulting in seminal books. He visited schools, churches, and civic groups to promote citizenship education, especially the right to vote. In his Norfolk Journal and Guide weekly column, he called on blacks to resist Jim Crow “by voting, by organizing political parties, by maintaining pressure groups ... by the lobby, and by such common everyday devices as the letter, the telegram, or the personal interview with office holders.”

Partnering with the Virginia NAACP and State Teachers Association, he recruited and remade the Petersburg League of Negro Voters as the statewide Virginia Voters League. During World War II he crusaded for the “double b”: “By the bullet our soldiers and civilians may help to win the present war against fascism, but a permanent democracy can only be achieved by the ballot” (Gavins, 1993, p. 111). Jackson helped organize the Durham, North Carolina conference of southern black leaders (1942) whose statement “fundamentally opposed” segregation. He also joined postwar campaigns to abolish the poll tax.