Blyden Jackson (October 12, 1910 – 2000) was a Black American academic, essayist, and activist.
The grandson of slaves, born in the segregated South, Jackson was the first Black American to become a full professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1969, and "the first Black American professor at a traditionally white university in the Southeast."[1]
At UNC Chapel Hill, Jackson pioneered the African American Studies program and helped recruit more Black American faculty members. With his wife, he is the namesake of Blyden and Roberta Jackson Hall on campus.
Jackson taught at Madison Jr. High School in Kentucky from 1934 to 1945.[2] He joined Fisk University, a historically black college, as an assistant professor of English in 1945, and left as a tenured associate professor in 1954.[2] He was a full professor of English at Southern University, another historically black college, from 1954 to 1956, and he later became the dean of its Graduate School.[2]
Jackson joined the English department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1969,[8] where he was the first African-American faculty member to become a full professor.[4] He was also "the first African American professor at a traditionally white university in the Southeast."[1] He was a professor until 1973, when he became an administrator, serving as special assistant to the Dean of the Graduate School until 1981,[2] and Associate Dean until 1983.[1] He pioneered the African-American Studies program at UNC Chapel Hill, where he also served on a committee to hire more African-Americans as faculty.[4]
Jackson was married to Roberta Jackson,[5] an associate professor of education at UNC Chapel Hill who predeceased him in 1999.[4] The Blyden and Roberta Jackson Graduate Fellowship Fund at UNC Chapel Hill was established in 1989.[9] The Blyden and Roberta Jackson Hall, which houses the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, was named for them in 1992.[4] Jackson died in 2000, at the age of 89.[6]
Jackson, Blyden; Rubin, Louis D. Jr. (1974). Black Poetry in America: Two Essays in Historical Interpretation. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press. OCLC15027889.
^ abcdefMiller, R. Baxter (Fall 1984). "The Wasteland and the Flower: Through Blyden Jackson: A Revised Theory for Black Southern Literature". The Southern Literary Journal. 17 (1): 3–11. JSTOR20077746.
^ ab"Jackson, Blyden". Notable Kentucky African Americans Database. University of Kentucky. Retrieved December 8, 2017.
^ ab"Jackson, Reid E., Sr". Notable Kentucky African Americans Database. Retrieved December 8, 2017.
^Rubin, Louis D. Jr. (September 2000). "BLYDEN JACKSON: A MEMORY: Chapel Hill, North Carolina, May 18, 2000". CLA Journal. 44 (1): 133–139. JSTOR44325025.