The collection contains biographical materials including copies of the correspondence and press coverage related to her application to pursue graduate work at the University of Virginia in 1935 and its denial for "good and sufficient reasons" based on her race; as well as some selected personal and professional correspondence; some original writing by Jackson and her son Julian Houston, including speeches, essays, and poetry; scrapbooks and albums; a few photographs; and some papers and photographs pertaining to the career and estate of her second husband Dr. James Earle Stuart. A small group of VIP correspondence includes letters from Mary McLeon Bethune, Edward W. Brooke, W.E.B. DuBois (copy of letter to another individual), Michael S. Dukakis, Lena Horne, Robert F. Kennedy, Ada MacLeish, Arhibald MacLeish, Isabel (Mrs. Adam Clayton) Powell, Dan Quayle, Barbara Summers, Mary Church Terrell, and Harrison A. Williams, Jr. The bulk of the collection consists of topical files related to her teaching career, particularly at Middlesex County College, Edison, N.J. and the Kilmer Job Corps Center of Edison, N.J.; her active roles in the National Council of Teachers and the Conference on College Composition and Communication; the African-American experience; and the work of Jackson and her husband J. Earle Jackson in civil rights and social issues in Plainfield, N.J. Other topics include the First Unitarian Churches of Richmond, Va., and Plainfield, N.J., L. Douglas Wilder, VIrginia Union University., Roland Hayes, Langston Hughes, John Keats, Alice Dunbar Nelson and Maggie Lena Walker. Other items of interest include the World War II diary and letters of African American Granver Paige Thomas of the 1313th Engineer Regiment; Ervin L. Jordan's "Blacks and the University of Virginia: an overview 1819-1987." The collection also contains three videocassettes : "Our Inspiration, the story of Maggie Lena Walker," "The Wilder inauguration, January 13, 1990," and "Who is? Roland Hayes" ; two compact disks "With good reason, race and admissions"; and two filmstrips "Outstanding Americans of Negro origin" and " A trip with UNICEF."
