1 10 1 https://archive.englewoodmakeshistory.org/files/original/abedce1efc6e322210c016b596c7ba8d.jpg ea238d106827d61bea120a66515e9467 https://archive.englewoodmakeshistory.org/files/original/163e0ab744fc70820493a7b8be013958.jpg 9a5b9781fb5c453b890d50b646693c58 https://archive.englewoodmakeshistory.org/files/original/9a0edbd71385c249771422d7f97080c6.jpg f75424f58122bb73d4f2cd40cd64b194 https://archive.englewoodmakeshistory.org/files/original/59c05e6a37ac6d1b34fe0d8d613c6406.jpg 9889b01c26f9042c15fce52ffcabb41d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource People People An individual. Metadata for a person provides detailed biographical information to describe the life of a historical figure. Birth Date 1891-03-01 Birthplace Englewood, New Jersey, USA Death Date 1973-10-21 Occupation Activist, Civil Rights Journalist Civic Leader Source of File Attached <p>Alexander, Otis. <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/people-african-american-history/alexander-louis-jackson-ii-1891-1973/">“Alexander Louis Jackson, II (1891-1973).”</a> <i>Blackpast</i>, 30 Nov. 2022.</p> <div></div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jackson, Alexander Louis (1891-1973) Description An account of the resource <h2>Alexander Louis Jackson (1891–1971)</h2> <p><strong>Scholar, Institution Builder, and Civil Rights Strategist</strong></p> <p>Alexander Louis Jackson was born on March 1, 1891, in Englewood, New Jersey, and grew up on William and Humphrey Streets in the heart of the city’s historic African American Fourth Ward community. At the time of his childhood, roughly 400 African Americans—about six percent of Englewood’s population—lived in the city. Nearly sixty percent resided in the Fourth Ward near West Palisade Avenue, while others worked primarily as live-in domestics in the homes of Englewood’s industrial and banking elite.</p> <p>From an early age, Jackson distinguished himself as a scholar and leader. In 1905 he graduated first in his class from Liberty School, delivering the valedictory address. He entered Englewood High School that fall, excelling in debate, football, baseball, and track, while also selling newspapers to help support his family. He later completed his secondary education at Phillips Academy Andover, where he won the Means Prize for best essay and delivered the commencement speech in 1910.</p> <p>That same year, Jackson entered Harvard University. He quickly made his mark on the track team, setting a freshman record in the 220-yard low hurdles in competition against Yale and later competing in intercollegiate meets, including a second-place finish in the 120-yard high hurdles behind Olympian James Wendell. Academically, he studied German, English, and economics, graduating in 1914 eleventh in a class of 135. Elected class orator, he was praised in the press as a product of New Jersey’s public schools who might become “a second Booker T. Washington.” He accomplished all of this while holding outside employment to finance his education.</p> <h3>Founding the Institutional Black History Movement</h3> <p>In 1915, while serving as executive secretary of the Wabash Avenue YMCA in Chicago, Jackson hosted a pivotal meeting with Carter G. Woodson, William B. Hartgrove, George Cleveland Hall, and James E. Stamps. The men were in Chicago for the National Half Century Exposition and Lincoln Jubilee commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of emancipation. Out of their discussions emerged the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH).</p> <p>Jackson had first met Woodson at Harvard, where Woodson was completing his doctorate in history—the second African American to earn a Ph.D. from the university, after W.E.B. Du Bois. Together, they envisioned more than a commemorative observance. They sought to build an enduring intellectual infrastructure for Black history. The ASNLH launched the <em>Journal of Negro History</em> in 1916 and established Negro History Week in 1926, which later evolved into Black History Month.</p> <p>Their work built on a longer tradition of African American commemorations of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass and on educational initiatives such as Mary Church Terrell’s establishment of Frederick Douglass Day in Washington, D.C., schools. Jackson and his colleagues mobilized churches, fraternities, sororities, schools, and civic organizations in a year-round effort to produce and disseminate scholarship about African American life and achievement.</p> <h3>Civic Leadership and Business Influence</h3> <p>Beyond scholarship, Jackson moved fluidly between civic activism and business leadership. He helped found the Chicago branch of the National Urban League in 1917 and later served as education secretary for the organization. From 1921 to 1924 he was assistant publisher of the <em>Chicago Defender</em>, then the nation’s largest Black-owned newspaper, becoming general manager in 1925. He also served as president of the Board of Trustees of Provident Hospital and Training School, the first African American-owned and operated hospital in the United States.</p> <p>Jackson became a successful real estate investor and remained active in youth development through the YMCA, Boys Scouts, and Boys Club Foundation. Though based in Chicago and later Michigan, he maintained close ties to Englewood. In 1926 he invited W.E.B. Du Bois to speak at an “Older Boys” conference held at Englewood’s First Baptist Church, part of a broader effort to address what reformers called the growing “boys problem” of delinquency.</p> <h3>A Legal Stand Against Segregation</h3> <p>In 1933, Jackson brought a pioneering civil rights lawsuit in St. Joseph County, Michigan, after a white resort owner posted a “whites only” notice on his automobile while Jackson and his family were swimming at a public beach at Lake Fisher. Jackson sued for humiliation and discrimination. Although the court awarded only symbolic damages of one dollar, the ruling affirmed that African Americans could challenge racial exclusion successfully in court—an important, if incremental, legal victory in the era before modern civil rights legislation.</p> <h3>Family and Generational Achievement</h3> <p>In 1914 Jackson married Charlotte E. Walker. They had four children: Caroline Booth Jackson, Alexander Louis Jackson III, William Edward Jackson, and Winslow Loring Jackson. After Charlotte’s death in 1928, Jackson married Jana Lenas Booth, who died in 1966. In 1968 he married Marie Poston.</p> <p>Jackson’s commitment to education extended to his children. A 1943 newspaper feature highlighted the family’s remarkable academic legacy. His eldest son, Alexander Louis Jackson III, graduated from Harvard University after first attending Phillips Andover and the University of Pennsylvania. At Andover he lettered in football and track and captained the track team; at Harvard he majored in sociology and served on his senior class committee.</p> <p>His second son, William Edward Jackson, graduated from Phillips Andover and prepared to follow in the family’s footsteps. William, like his father, excelled as a hurdler and participated in class leadership activities. The youngest son, Winslow Loring Jackson, was also educated at Andover. All three sons traced a direct educational lineage from their father, who himself had graduated from Andover in 1910 and Harvard in 1914.</p> <p>The story of the Jackson family—rooted in Englewood’s Fourth Ward and extending to elite institutions like Andover and Harvard—illustrates both the barriers African Americans confronted in the early twentieth century and the extraordinary determination required to overcome them. Education, athletic excellence, institutional building, and civic engagement formed the throughline across generations.</p> <p>Alexander Louis Jackson’s life stands at the intersection of local Black community life in Englewood, national institution building in Chicago, and early civil rights litigation in Michigan. He was not merely a participant in the Black history movement—he helped institutionalize it. His work ensured that African American history would be researched, published, taught, and commemorated long before it entered mainstream curricula. And through his children, that commitment to education and leadership continued into the next generation.</p> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Colman, David Ludder, Rachelle Subject The topic of the resource Activism, Civil Rights Newspapers Medical Services Englewood New Jersey, Fourth Ward African American Civil Rights Newspapers