James E. Jackson and Esther Cooper Jackson Papers

James E. Jackson (1914-2007) and Esther Cooper Jackson (1917-2022) were Black American communists and civil rights activists, also known for their role in founding and leading the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) during the 1930s and 1940s. Both were raised in middle-class families with histories in civil rights activism, James in Richmond, Virginia, and Esther in Arlington, Virginia. James graduated from Virginia Union University in 1934, and Howard University (the alma mater of his parents) 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. James joined the Communist Party in 1931, and Esther Cooper joined in 1939. The couple met in 1939 when James was staying at Fisk University while working as an investigator for what would become Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). They married in 1941.

James entered the U.S. Army in 1943, serving in the China Burma India Theatre for eighteen months, eventually attaining the rank of sergeant. In the fall of 1945, Esther attended the World Youth Congress in London, where she met W.E.B. Du Bois, beginning a close association with the Jacksons which culminated in Du Bois' decision to join the Communist Party. In 1946 James became State Chairman of the Communist Party of Louisiana. In 1947 the Jacksons moved to Detroit, where James worked as a Party organizer among the autoworkers, while Esther was active in the local branches of the Progressive Party and the Civil Rights Congress. In 1951 the Jacksons moved to New York and James became Southern Director of the Communist Party. Later that year he was indicted under the Smith Act, charged with advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government and went underground to avoid arrest, while Esther worked for the National Committee to Defend Negro Leadership and the Families of Smith Act Victims. Emerging five years later, James was sentenced to prison, although he did not serve time.

Thereafter, James served as a full-time Communist Party official including as a member of its leading Political Bureau, and later, Education Director. He eventually took the position of International Affairs Secretary in which he traveled throughout Communist countries and elsewhere. During this time, Esther was involved in the founding of a Black American political and cultural quarterly, Freedomways in 1961 and served as its editor from 1961 to 1985. James retired in 1991 in the aftermath of the split within the CPUSA.

Sources:

Jackson, Esther Cooper. This Is My Husband: Fighter for His People, Political Refugee. (New York: National Committee to Defend Negro Leadership, 1953).

Kelley, Robin D.G. 'Southern Negro Youth Congress.' In Encyclopedia of the American Left, pp. 737-9. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992).

The Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) was an American organization established in 1937 at a conference in Richmond, Virginia. It was established as a left-wing civil rights organization, arising from the National Negro Congress (NNC) and the leftist student movement of the 1930s. The SNYC aimed to empower Black people in the Southern region to fight for their rights and envisioned interracial working-class coalitions as the way to dismantle the southern caste system. The SNYC consisted of young leaders who had participated in the National Negro Congress.

The first gathering of the SNYC consisted of a wide range of individuals including representatives from almost all Historically Black Colleges in the country, Boy and Girl Scouts, steel workers, and members of the YMCA. During the late 1930s and 1940s the SNYC engaged in leading boycotts against discriminatory working environments, registering Black American voters, organizing workers into unions, and assisting rural Black Americans in legal cases. Prominent members of the SNYC included activists James E. Jackson, Helen Gray, Esther Cooper Jackson, Louis Burnham, and Edward E. Strong. The organization also had the support of prominent community figures including Mary McCleod Bethune, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and W.E.B Du Bois. The SNYC began to decline in 1949 in part due to the postwar period of the United States caught in the Cold War.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Negro_Youth_Congress viewed on November 3, 2023.

Freedomways was a leading Black American theoretical, political and cultural journal from 1961 until 1985. The journal's founders were Louis Burnham, Edward Strong, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Its first general editor was Shirley Graham Du Bois, followed closely by Esther Cooper Jackson, who served in the role until 1985. The mission was to reflect and influence the rising tide of activism in the U.S., both politically and culturally. The journal published articles, poetry, commentary, short stories, book reviews, readers' forum, and artwork. In addition to noted Black American intellectuals and artists whose work appeared in Freedomways, including writers James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Paul Robeson, Nikki Giovanni, Lorraine Hansberry, and visual artists Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, and Elizabeth Catlett, the journal published the work of international literary authors including Pablo Neruda and Derek Walcott, and political leaders and intellectuals Kwame Nkrumah, Julius K. Nyerere, Agostinho Neto, Jomo Kenyatta, Claudia Jones and C. L. R. James. Prominent entertainers and artists such as Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, and Harry Belafonte were consistently involved with Freedomways' publication during most of the journal's existence.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedomways viewed on November 3, 2023.