Jackson, Esther Cooper
James E. Jackson (1914-2007) and Esther Cooper Jackson (1917- ) are African American communists and civil rights activists, best known for their role in founding and leading the Southern Negro Youth Congress (1937-1948). Both were raised in middle-class families with histories of civil rights activism. James Jackson, Sr. was a druggist in Richmond, Virginia. Raised in Arlington, Virginia, Esther Cooper's father was a lieutenant in the U.S. army, and her mother worked in the U.S. Forestry Service during World War I and later became actively involved in the Arlington, Virginia chapter of the NAACP and in local school desegregation campaigns. James Jackson graduated from Virginia Union University in 1934, and at Howard University (the alma mater of his parents) graduated from the College of Pharmacy in 1937. After attending Dunbar High School in Washington D.C., Esther Cooper graduated from Oberlin College in 1938, then completed her master's degree at Fisk University in 1940, writing as her thesis Negro Women Domestic Workers in Relation to Trade Unionism . James Jackson joined the Communist Party in 1931, and Esther Cooper joined in 1939. The couple met in 1939 (they married in 1941) when Jackson was staying at Fisk while working for Ralph Bunche as an investigator for what would become Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944).
The Southern Negro Youth Congress, a communist-led popular front organization, conceived at the first National Negro Congress in 1936, held its first annual conference, organized by James Jackson and Ed Strong, in Richmond, in February, 1937. Jackson and Cooper played leading roles throughout the SNYC's first decade, as indicated by its letterhead from 1946, where Cooper is the Executive Secretary, Jackson the Special Projects Director, and their fellow-communists and close friends Louis and Dorothy Burnham were, respectively, Organizational Secretary and Educational Director. In 1938 Jackson helped lead the successful organizing of the United Tobacco Stemmers and Laborers Union Local 279 in Richmond. In 1939 the SNYC moved is headquarters to Birmingham, Alabama, with its large concentration of African American industrial workers. Under is slogan "Freedom, Equality, Opportunity," the SNYC campaigned for the full range civil, economic, political, and social rights for African Americans. Activities and issues included, in addition to supporting labor organizing (including domestic workers), campaigns against lynching, police brutality and the poll tax, for the right to vote and an end to segregation, for an end to employment discrimination (sometimes via consumer boycotts), and during World War II, for enforcement of the U.S. Fair Employment Practices Committee's resolution 8802 barring discrimination in war industries. The SNYC also published the periodical Cavalcade: The March of Southern Youth, and supported educational and cultural activities, including "People's Theaters." The SNYC held its last conference in 1948, and the pressure of Cold War anti-communism led to its subsequent dissolution. However, SNYC members went on to play important roles in the civil rights movement of the 19650s-60s, including E.D. Nixon, and several became elected officials.
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2023-11-09 11:11:53 am |
Stacey Flatt |
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2021-01-12 09:01:12 am |
Amy C. Vo |
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2021-01-12 09:01:34 am |
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2020-06-18 01:06:59 pm |
Amy C. Vo |
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2020-06-09 11:06:30 am |
Amy C. Vo |
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2020-06-09 11:06:55 am |
Amy C. Vo |
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2020-05-27 02:05:11 pm |
Jerry Simmons |
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2016-08-12 10:08:03 am |
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2016-08-12 10:08:02 am |
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