Blyden Jackson was a Black American academic, essayist, and activist.
14 Facts About Blyden Jackson
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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".
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At UNC Chapel Hill, Blyden Jackson pioneered the African American Studies program and helped recruit more Black American faculty members.
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Blyden Jackson was born on October 12,1910, in Paducah, Kentucky.
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Blyden Jackson's father, George Washington Jackson, was a history teacher and his mother, Julia Reid, a librarian.
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Blyden Jackson attended the University of Michigan on a Rosenwald Scholarship, where he earned a master's degree in 1938 and a PhD in 1952.
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Blyden Jackson joined Fisk University, a historically black college, as an assistant professor of English in 1945, and left as a tenured associate professor in 1954.
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Blyden Jackson 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.
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Blyden Jackson joined the English department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1969, where he was the first African-American faculty member to become a full professor.
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Blyden Jackson was "the first African American professor at a traditionally white university in the Southeast".
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Blyden Jackson was a professor until 1973, when he became an administrator, serving as special assistant to the Dean of the Graduate School until 1981, and Associate Dean until 1983.
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Blyden Jackson pioneered the African-American Studies program at UNC Chapel Hill, where he served on a committee to hire more African Americans as faculty.
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Blyden Jackson wrote about the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright.
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Blyden Jackson was married to Roberta Blyden Jackson, an associate professor of education at UNC Chapel Hill who predeceased him in 1999.