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| Creator: | Jackson, Blyden |
| Creator: | Parker, Freddie L. |
| Title: | Oral history interview with Blyden Jackson, June 27, 1991 |
| Date: | 1991 June 27 |
| Description: | Blyden Jackson grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, during the 1910s and 1920s. Jackson completed his bachelor's degree at Wilberforce University and attended one year of graduate school at Columbia University before returning to Louisville, where he worked as a teacher for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) from the early 1930s into the mid-1940s. In 1945, Jackson moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to accept a position teaching English at Fisk University. Having received a Rosenwald Fellowship with the aid of Charles S. Johnson, president of Fisk University, Jackson completed his doctoral degree at the University of Michigan in 1952. Two years later, Jackson left Fisk University to teach at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he remained for fifteen years. In 1969, he accepted a position at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As the first African American professor at UNC, Jackson also became the first African American professor at a traditionally white university in the Southeast. Jackson finished his academic career at UNC, also serving as the associate dean of the graduate school before retiring in 1983. In addition to tracing the trajectory of his academic career, Jackson also offers his commentary on his experiences as an African American graduate student at the predominantly white University of Michigan, his interactions with Langston Hughes from the 1930s through subsequent decades, and his thoughts on the lingering challenges of recruiting African American professors and graduate students. The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata. |
| Types: | Transcripts | Sound recordings | Oral histories |
| Subjects: | Jackson, Blyden | African American teachers--North Carolina--Chapel Hill | College teachers--North Carolina--Chapel Hill | African American teachers--Tennessee--Nashville | College teachers--Tennessee--Nashville | African American teachers--Louisiana--Baton Rouge | College teachers--Louisiana--Baton Rouge | Discrimination in higher education | Faculty integration--North Carolina--Chapel Hill | African American graduate students--Michigan--Ann Arbor | Chapel Hill (N.C.) | Orange County (N.C.) | Nashville (Tenn.) | Davidson County (Tenn.) | Baton Rouge (La.) | East Baton Rouge Parish (La.) | Ann Arbor (Mich.) | Washtenaw County (Mich.) |
| Collection: | Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement |
| Institution: | Documenting the American South (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) |
| Contributors: | Southern Oral History Program | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project) | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library | Oral histories of the American South (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project)) |
| Online Publisher: | [Chapel Hill, N.C.] : University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. | 2007 |
| Original Material: | Title from menu page (viewed on Nov. 10, 2008). Interview participants: Blyden Jackson, interviewee; Freddie L. Parker, interviewer. Duration: 01:09:24. This electronic edition is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South. It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South. Text encoded by Jennifer Joyner. Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers. |
| Related Materials: | Forms part of Oral histories of the American South collection. |
| Persistent Link to Item: | http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/L-0051/menu.html |
