Jackson, Emory Overton

Impact on the world

As editor of Alabama’s largest Black newspaper from around 1940 until his death, Jackson provided the most thorough contemporary coverage of the 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott of any journalist in the state, developing a close working relationship with a young Martin Luther King Jr., whom he likened to Mahatma Gandhi, and led the years-long press campaign to desegregate the University of Alabama. Founder and first president of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, Jackson personally hid the organization’s membership rolls in the Birmingham World’s safe in 1956 to protect members from state officials seeking to intimidate them after Alabama banned the NAACP from operating in the state, and his popular “Tip Off” column tracked officer-involved shootings and bombings using index cards years before such data collection became standard journalistic practice. Though he never married and largely avoided the spotlight of the mass demonstrations of the 1960s, preferring legal and electoral strategies for change, Rosa Parks credited Jackson as an inspiration who spoke out against injustice “before it was popular,” and a historical marker now stands outside his former Birmingham office.

Life & background

Born September 8, 1908, in Buena Vista, Georgia, and raised from age eleven in Birmingham’s Enon Ridge neighborhood, Jackson graduated from Morehouse College in 1932 with majors in English, economics, and education, taught high school English and coached basketball, and joined the Birmingham World as a sportswriter and book reviewer in 1934. He served in the Army during World War II, returned to the World as managing editor around 1940 and remained its editor until his death, and died of prostate cancer in Birmingham on September 10, 1975, at age 67, having never married or retired from the paper.

Sources

1. Encyclopedia of Alabama; BlackPast.org; Bhamwiki; Alabama News Center