Delilah Jackson (
circa
Circa is a word of Latin origin meaning 'approximately'.
Circa or CIRCA may also refer to:
* CIRCA (art platform), art platform based in London
* Circa (band), a progressive rock supergroup
* Circa (company), an American skateboard footwear com ...
1929 - January 12, 2013) was a
cultural historian who specialized in collecting the history of black entertainers in
Harlem.
Biography
Jackson grew up close to the
Apollo Theater
The Apollo Theater is a music hall at 253 West 125th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard (Seventh Avenue) and Frederick Douglass Boulevard (Eighth Avenue) in the Harlem neighborhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City. It is a not ...
in
Harlem.
She attended school at
P.S. 157
P.S. 157 is a historic school building located at 327 St. Nicholas Avenue between West 126th and West 127th Streets in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was built from 1896 to 1899 and was designed by C. B. J. Snyder in the ...
.
Jackson began to collect the
cultural history of Harlem and black entertainers in 1975.
She began her collection with recording
oral histories of various women who had worked as
chorus girls
''Chorus Girls'' was a 1981 musical written by The Kinks lead singer and songwriter Ray Davies, who collaborated with ''The Long Good Friday'' screenwriter Barrie Keeffe.
It opened at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, London starring Marc Sinde ...
at the
Cotton Club.
Later, that same year, she created the Black Patti Project which brought programming to former entertainers who were now living in
nursing homes
A nursing home is a facility for the residential care of elderly or disabled people. Nursing homes may also be referred to as skilled nursing facility (SNF) or long-term care facilities. Often, these terms have slightly different meanings to in ...
.
The project went on to work toward collecting oral histories from black artists. Not only was Jackson known for preserving history, she often befriended the artists she met and visited them in nursing homes as they grew older. Her collection of history helped create a
historical context
Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians hav ...
for the artists and their work, according to the ''
New York Amsterdam News''. Over time, she amassed more 1,000 pieces of media that documented the work of black entertainers in Harlem.
Jackson curated a show at the
Smithsonian in 1997 called "Paris, the Jazz Age."
Jackson also lectured about entertainers from Harlem at
Columbia University, the
New School, the
Schomburg Center and at the Smithsonian.
She was awarded the 2001
Flo-Bert Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Committee to Celebrate Tap Dance Day.
In 2005, Jackson received the Tap Preservation Award from the
American Tap Dance Foundation
The American Tap Dance Foundation is a nonprofit organization whose primary goal is the presentation and teaching of tap dance. Its original stated purpose was to provide an "international home for tap dance, perpetuate tap as a contemporary art ...
.
Jackson died in her home on January 12, 2013.
References
External links
Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library Emory University
Delilah Jackson papers, 1852-2013Delilah Jackson papers
(Library of Congress)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jackson, Delilah
1929 births
2013 deaths
Historians from New York (state)
Cultural historians
African-American historians
People from Harlem
20th-century African-American people
21st-century African-American people