Esther Victoria Cooper Jackson (August 21, 1917 – August 23, 2022) was an American
civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of ...
activist and social worker. She worked with
Shirley Graham Du Bois
Shirley Graham Du Bois (born Lola Shirley Graham Jr.; November 11, 1896 – March 27, 1977) was an American writer, playwright, composer, and activist for African-American causes, among others. She won the Messner and the Anisfield-Wolf prizes f ...
,
W. E. B. Du Bois, Edward Strong, and
Louis E. Burnham, and was one of the founding editors of the magazine ''
Freedomways
''Freedomways'' was the leading African-American theoretical, political and cultural journal of the 1960s–1980s. It began publishing in 1961 and ceased in 1985.
The journal's founders were Louis Burnham, Edward Strong, W.E.B. Du Bois and its f ...
'', a theoretical, political and literary journal published from 1961 to 1985. She also served as organizational and executive secretary at the
Southern Negro Youth Congress
The Southern Negro Youth Congress was an American organization established in 1937 at a conference in Richmond, Virginia. The Southern Negro Youth Congress consisted of young leaders who participated in the National Negro Congress. The first gath ...
.
Early life and career
Jackson was born on August 21, 1917, in Arlington, Virginia, to George Posea Cooper and
Esther Georgia Irving Cooper, who served as president of the Arlington branch of the
NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...
.
She attended segregated schools as a child. She earned a bachelor's degree at
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...
in 1938 and a master's degree in sociology from
Fisk University
Fisk University is a private historically black liberal arts college in Nashville, Tennessee. It was founded in 1866 and its campus is a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In 1930, Fisk was the first Africa ...
in 1940.
Her 1940 thesis was "The Negro Woman Domestic Worker in Relation to Trade Unionism". Upon graduation, she received a
Rosenwald Fellowship to support a study on the attitudes of black youth toward World War II. She had been planning to conduct the study as part of her studies for a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago.
Of her upbringing and family, Jackson recounted:
In 1945 she was a delegate to the ''World Youth Congress'' in London and served as the chairman of the American Subcommittee on Problems of Dependent Peoples.
After graduate school, Jackson became a member of the staff of the Voting Project in
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama's most populous county. As of the 2021 census estimates, Birmingham had a population of 197,575, down 1% fr ...
, for the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC). While working with SNYC she met her future husband James E. Jackson, a Marxist theoretician who would work as a labor organizer and an official in the
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...
.
[ In a 2004 interview, she explained that her husband and the SNYC had in 1937 helped tobacco workers in ]Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
successfully agitate for an eight-hour day and pay increases. The tobacco workers held the first strike in Virginia since 1905, and their gains, according to C. Alvin Hughes, "helped SNYC earn a following among the black working class in the South".Rocksborough-Smith, Ian, "Bearing the Seeds of Struggle", MA thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2005.
/ref>
Originally intending only to stay for one summer, Jackson remained in Alabama for seven years, engaged in the struggle to bring down Jim Crow
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
segregation. For seven years as a prominent leader of SNYC, Esther Cooper Jackson worked with her husband, Louis and Dorothy Burnham, Ed Strong, Sallye and Frank Davis—parents of the Davis sisters, Angela and Fania—and numerous others, conducting many campaigns promoting the rights of blacks and poor whites. SNYC's agitation for the integration of the public transportation systems important in preparation for the struggles later on in the 1950s and 1960s.
''Freedomways''
In New York of 1961, Jackson became managing editor of ''Freedomways'', created by Esther Jackson, along with Louis Burnham, Jack O'Dell from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and writer Lorraine Hansberry. Freedomways was the central theoretical journal of the 20th century black arts and intellectual movement in the United States. From its launch in 1961, it attracted historians, sociologists, economists, artists, workers, and students to write on black history, heritage, and culture. Jackson would call it "a tool for the liberation of our people". ''Freedomways'' was a globally influential political, arts and intellectual journal that published international poets such as Pablo Neruda
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalà Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (; ), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Nerud ...
and Derek Walcott
Sir Derek Alton Walcott (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017) was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem ''Omeros'' (1990), which many critics view "as Walcot ...
, articles by African leaders including Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah (born 21 September 190927 April 1972) was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He was the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, having led the Gold Coast to independence from Britain in 1957. An in ...
, Julius K. Nyerere, Agostinho Neto
António Agostinho da Silva Neto (17 September 1922 – 10 September 1979) was an Angolan politician and poet. He served as the first president of Angola from 1975 to 1979, having led the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) i ...
, and Jomo Kenyatta
Jomo Kenyatta (22 August 1978) was a Kenyan anti-colonial activist and politician who governed Kenya as its Prime Minister from 1963 to 1964 and then as its first President from 1964 to his death in 1978. He was the country's first indigenous ...
and Caribbean leftist C. L. R. James
Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901 – 31 May 1989),Fraser, C. Gerald, ''The New York Times'', 2 June 1989. who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J. R. Johnson, was a Trinidadian historian, journalist and Marxist. His works are in ...
, as well as African-American authors such as James Baldwin
James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'', was published in 1953; de ...
, Alice Walker
Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was aw ...
, Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson ( ; April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American bass-baritone concert artist, stage and film actor, professional football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his p ...
, Nikki Giovanni
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. (born June 7, 1943) is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. One of the world's most well-known African-American poets,Jane M. Barstow, Yolanda Williams Page (eds)"Nikki Giovanni" ''E ...
, and Lorraine Hansberry
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965) was a playwright and writer. She was the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best-known work, the play ''A Raisin in the Sun'', highlig ...
. The most prominent African-American artists like Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Armstead Lawrence (September 7, 1917 – June 9, 2000) was an American painter known for his portrayal of African-American historical subjects and contemporary life. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", although by his own ...
, Romare Bearden
Romare Bearden (September 2, 1911 – March 12, 1988) was an American artist, author, and songwriter. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bearden grew up in New York City a ...
, and Elizabeth Catlett
Elizabeth Catlett, born as Alice Elizabeth Catlett, also known as Elizabeth Catlett Mora (April 15, 1915 – April 2, 2012) was an African American sculptor and graphic artist best known for her depictions of the Black-American experience in th ...
contributed cover art ''gratis'' to support the magazine, which was read worldwide. Uniting the Southern and Northern US civil rights struggles of the 1960s with an international viewpoint taking in Pan-Africanism
Pan-Africanism is a worldwide movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all Indigenous and diaspora peoples of African ancestry. Based on a common goal dating back to the Atlantic slave trade, the movement exte ...
and other cultural and political currents, the magazine is often viewed as a precursor of the Black Arts Movement
The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African American-led art movement that was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride. The movement expanded from ...
.
Personal life
Jackson and her husband, James E. Jackson, married in 1941, and had two children. They moved to Brooklyn in 1951, and remained married until his death in 2007.[ In 2015, Jackson moved to a retirement facility in ]Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
,[ where she died on August 23, 2022, two days after her 105th birthday.]
Works
''The Negro Woman Domestic Worker in Relation to Trade Unionism''
M.A. thesis, Fisk University, 1940, excerpts reprinted in ''Viewpoint Magazine'' 5 (October 2015). .
*
* Esther Cooper Jackson and Constance Pohl (2000)
''Freedomways Reader: Prophets in Their Own Country: Interventions—Theory and Contemporary Politics''
Boulder: Westview Press.
References
Further reading
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External links
Esther Cooper Jackson at 96: "Still in the Struggle"
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James E. Jackson and Esther Cooper Jackson Papers
at Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University
Southern Negro Youth Congress Forum 3
€”Audio recording: Cooper Jackson lectures on conditions in the South; she is introduced around 7:30 into the tape.
Audio recording: interview
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Jackson, Esther Cooper
1917 births
2022 deaths
African-American activists
20th-century American non-fiction writers
20th-century American women writers
African-American centenarians
African-American women writers
Alabama socialists
American centenarians
American civil rights activists
Fisk University alumni
Members of the Communist Party USA
New York (state) socialists
Oberlin College alumni
People from Arlington County, Virginia
Virginia socialists
Women centenarians
Women civil rights activists
Writers from Alabama
Writers from Brooklyn
Writers from Virginia