[ Her central roles in the Southern Negro Youth Congress, the
Civil Rights Congress, the Committee to Defend Negro Leadership and
Freedomways Magazine have cemented her role in history. ]
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ESTHER JACKSON, 105: LIFE REFLECTED THE 20TH CENTURY STRUGGLE FOR
EQUALITY  
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Timothy V. Johnson
August 30, 2022
People's World
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_ Her central roles in the Southern Negro Youth Congress, the Civil
Rights Congress, the Committee to Defend Negro Leadership and
Freedomways Magazine have cemented her role in history. _

James and Esther with their daughters Kathryn (left) and Harriet
(right), circa 1960s., Family collection

 

Esther Cooper Jackson was part of an “astonishingly excellent cohort
of Black women of an earlier generation, including Claudia Jones;
Shirley Graham; Louise Patterson; and Dorothy Burnham – who is still
with us (fortunately) at the age of 108 – who will serve as role
models and inspirations for all of us but especially Black girls, for
generations to come” noted historian Gerald Horne.

Jackson, long-time activist, writer, and editor died on August 23,
2022 – two days after her 105th birthday. Although her health had
recently been failing, she remained intellectually sharp, witty, and
eager to engage in discussions on national and international affairs.
 Jackson’s life illustrated and reflected the 20th-century struggle
for African-American equality, democracy, and world peace. Her central
roles in the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC), the Civil Rights
Congress, the Committee to Defend Negro Leadership,
and _Freedomways _magazine have cemented her place in history.

Horne continued: “A giant has fallen and, as often said, when an
elder of note has expired, an entire library has been buried with her.
Her foundational role with _Freedomways_, perhaps the most
significant periodical of the anti-Jim Crow movement should never be
forgotten.”

As the founding editor of _Freedomways_, Esther Cooper Jackson helped
create one of the most significant publications of the radical Black
left in the 1960s, and mentored countless others who were involved in
the milieu of the magazine, Ian Rocksborough-Smith from the University
of the Fraser Valley in S’ólh Téméxw/British Columbia, Canada
told _People’s World_.

“From her over 25 years as editor of _Freedomways_ magazine, she
gave the liberation struggles and movements across Africa, Asia, the
Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States a
beacon light.  She gave old and newer voices a place to write and
be heard,” said Maurice Jackson, a close friend of the Jacksons and
a professor at Georgetown University.

Esther Cooper was born in Arlington, Virginia on August 21, 1917. Her
mother, Esther Georgia Irving Cooper, was president of the Arlington
NAACP and active in the struggle against educational discrimination.
Jackson attended the segregated schools of Arlington before graduating
from Oberlin College in Ohio and later earning a master’s degree in
sociology from Fisk University. Her master’s thesis, entitled “The
Negro Woman Domestic Worker in Relation to Trade Unionism,” is cited
by scholars as one of the first sociological studies on African
American women workers.

She then planned to enroll in a Ph.D. program in sociology at the
University of Chicago and could have easily proceeded to the
relatively comfortable world of an academic, but instead decided to
join the Southern Negro Youth Congress’s Voting Project. Through her
affiliation with SNYC she met and married her future husband, Dr.
James E. Jackson. Thus, began decades of work in the struggle for
equality, democracy, and peace.

For years, Esther Cooper Jackson traveled throughout Alabama
organizing the struggle for voting rights and an end to racial
segregation. Over the course of those travels, she worked closely with
individuals who would years later form the Alabama Christian Movement
as well as other activists including Louis Burnham, Jack O’Dell, Ed
and Augusta Strong, and Sallye and Frank Davis.

The late civil rights activist Julian Bond once noted that the
Jacksons and their co-workers “organized the Southern Negro Youth
Congress decades before SNCC spearheaded the civil rights movement of
the 1960s. SNYC was a model of what Black youth should and ought to
do,” Bond said, and “preceded us, dared as we dared, dreamed as we
dreamed.”

While James Jackson served in the U.S. military during World War II,
Esther continued her organizing activities in the South. After the
war, the Jacksons moved to Detroit, where James participated in
educational work on behalf of the Communist Party among Detroit
autoworkers and Esther became active in the Civil Rights Congress. In
the CRC, Esther helped lead the fight to defend leaders of the
Communist Party against McCarthyite persecution. Her husband James was
targeted by the U.S. government and went underground for five years.
Esther was left to raise their two children while, at the same time,
organizing against McCarthyite repression.

She was also among the leaders in the struggle to defend Rosa Lee
Ingram, an African American woman in Georgia who, along with two of
her sons, was convicted of murder in the death of a white sharecropper
who had assaulted her.

As James emerged from the underground, he stood trial and was
convicted, but the conviction was overturned before he served any
prison time.

In the early 1960s, the Jacksons moved to New York City. James took on
a national leadership role in the Communist Party and Esther began
working with activists – including Shirley Graham Du Bois, W.E.B. Du
Bois, and Paul Robeson – to launch the publication _Freedomways_.
From 1961-1985, Esther was the managing editor of this influential
magazine which covered politics, international affairs, and culture
within the context of African-American history.

Activists and scholars from across the country paid tribute to Esther
Cooper Jackson on her death.

Maurice Jackson told _People’s World_: “Esther Cooper Jackson,
was the Soul of Black Folks, the Soul of Humanity – the Salt of the
Earth.  From her days at Washington’s historic Dunbar High School
to Oberlin and to Fisk University, she fought for equality. From her
cofounding of the Southern Negro Youth Congress she was a warrior for
justice. During the fascist-like McCarthy era, she stood as a woman of
enormous courage, saying that she and Jack ‘devoted ourselves to
each other, to our daughters, and to the great cause of our times’
through thick and thin. Hers was a ‘life supreme,’ where
throughout her century plus five years she emitted a love supreme, for
humankind. Nothing could be finer.”

Frank Chapman, executive director of the National Alliance Against
Racist and Political Repression, said he met Esther Jackson in 1963,
just two years after he had been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to
life and 50 years in the Missouri State Prison. “What inspired me to
write her was a fellow prisoner who gave me a copy
of _Freedomways_.” Three years later, in the summer of
1966, _Freedomways_ published an article Chapman had written titled,
“Mathematics in Antiquity or Science and Africa.” “Esther helped
my case in getting national attention,” Chapman said. “Also, this
was the beginning of a relationship with Esther and Jim Jackson that
stayed with me throughout the time I was in prison  (13 more years
after 1963) and until now, almost 58 years later.” Chapman called
Esther Jackson “a long-distance warrior for freedom.”

Sara Rzeszutek Haviland, the Jacksons’ biographer, added, “It is
difficult to quantify Esther Cooper Jackson’s contributions to the
Black freedom movement. In addition to being an incredibly important
activist, she welcomed everyone she met with warmth, generosity, and
an unforgettable smile. She will be sorely missed by all who knew
her.”

Toward the end of her life, Esther Jackson began to receive the
attention she deserved. Haviland analyzed the Jacksons’ contribution
to the struggle for democracy in _James and Esther Cooper Jackson:
Love and Courage in the Black Freedom Movement._ (University Press of
Kentucky, 2015.)  Esther was frequently asked to lecture at Harvard
University’s  Hutchins Center for African and African American
Research
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In 2006, New York University’s Tamiment Library received the
Jacksons’ archive. A symposium heralding this important acquisition
was held in October 2006. The proceedings were published as _Red
Activists and Black Freedom: James and Esther Jackson and the Long
Civil Right Revolution_ (Routledge, 2010.) The symposium featured
scholars and activists, including David Levering Lewis, Robin D.G.
Kelley, Maurice Jackson, and Angela Davis.

Esther Cooper Jackson’s life is an example of a life well lived. One
that was dedicated to the betterment of the society and the world in
which she was born.

Esther Cooper Jackson – _Presente!_

_Timothy V Johnson is a member of the African American Equality
Commission of the CPUSA._

* Black Women
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* freedom struggle
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* Freedomways
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