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James and Esther Cooper Jackson

Love and Courage in the Black Freedom Movement

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

Jack and Esther's Paths to Activism and Each Other

When James Edward Jackson Jr. was a small boy in Richmond, Virginia, in the early twentieth century, he would stand outside his father's pharmacy on the corner of Brook Road and Dubois Avenue every evening and wait. The strong stench of sweat and tobacco wafted his way before he saw anything coming, and then a throng of people appeared in the distance. The procession was composed of tobacco workers heading home from the city's tobacco factories. These workers were black, mostly female, and desperately poor. Many were clad in burlap tobacco sacks that they had taken from the factory because they could not afford clothes. As Jack observed: "The struggle for survival in poverty was written in the ragged clothes and shoelaces and the conditions of the houses they lived in." The women were exhausted, often ill, and trapped in dire poverty. Even though their circumstances were difficult, they would sing and shout with joy as they headed north toward their homes. Jack said good evening to each woman as she walked by the pharmacy, and he would stand outside until the last worker passed. His lifelong activism for black freedom, his membership in the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), and the development of his political outlook were rooted in this memory.

Jack's political coming of age was a product of growing up middle-class with politically minded, progressive parents in a segregated southern city that included deep poverty. His parents had embraced the politics of middle-class respectability and racial uplift and worked to raise their children with opportunities and awareness of the world around them. His future wife, Esther Cooper, was raised in a similar household. Her mother was a model of black female respectability and social engagement, and she instilled in her daughters the value of education, the fight for racial equality, and female independence. In both families, black progressivism offered a framework for embracing social justice, upward mobility, and uplift. Progressivism informed their upbringings, and Jack and Esther fused that exposure to the political context of the Great Depression, during which they became politically active.

For African Americans, the Progressive era offered a combination of setbacks and advancements. Progressivism emerged as a social and political movement in the late nineteenth century and led Americans to reconsider the relationship of the individual and the state, gender roles, industrialization, wealth, status, and social difference. Progressivism in its broadest sense altered American life dramatically, particularly for the middle class and for whites. More concerned with social welfare, charity, purity, and improved labor conditions, Progressives employed a new sense of morality as a way of measuring the individual. Settlement houses offered hope to impoverished immigrants, schools revamped curricula and received renewed support, and factories were overhauled to ensure the safety of workers and products alike. But, in the wake of extensive efforts to improve the moral, economic, and political quality of life for white Americans, white southerners continued to scramble to adapt to African American freedom after slavery. Massive violence against African Americans in the South had been a widely accepted approach to stamping out black assertions of equality, but it was neither practical nor sustainable. To maintain an ordered, moral society, white southerners determined that segregation was the most appropriate way to simultaneously prop up white supremacy and adhere to a strict Progressive moral code.

The cloak of civility emerged as a disguise for the persistent oppression of African American southerners. Civility dictated social behavior, mobilizing one's manners and gentility as a marker of status and ability to contribute to a polite society. As the historian William Chafe argues, whites used civility to promote consensus and avoid social conflict, and African Americans were forced to accommodate it: "As victims of civility, blacks had long been forced to operate within an etiquette of race relationships that offered almost no room for collective self-assertion and independence. White people dictated the ground rules, and the benefits went only to those who played the game." Segregation offered the appearance of a polite alternative to direct racial violence, but, for African Americans in the Progressive era, the threat of white violence nonetheless loomed large. Any perceived step out of segregation's boundaries riled white reaction and often resulted in lynching. Segregation was designed "to send an unmistakable message of racial inequality that would intimidate blacks and reassure whites [and] deprive blacks of so much economic and political opportunity that they would never threaten white power." Nationwide, white progressives rationalized segregation as a positive alternative to race war, but the inequality that Jim Crow engendered also produced a heightened drive for resistance among African Americans.

Not all white progressives embraced racial segregation as an essential component of an ordered world. In 1910, white and black Progressives joined together to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). At its outset, the NAACP modeled itself on abolitionist groups. Among its leaders, W. E. B. Du Bois believed that, as the historian David Howard-Pitney writes, "the South in 1919, as in the 1850s, was a reactionary society that stifled all dissent": "Then as now, the South stood alone against rising national and international trends toward democracy and freedom." The NAACP fought segregation's legal roots and worked to improve education for African Americans, focusing on opportunity and change. For the black middle class in the South, education, self-help, entrepreneurship, and professionalism promised a path toward a better future in spite of racial obstacles. These assets contributed to constructing what Du Bois referred to as the talented tenth. Well-educated and established blacks, a small elite in the United States, could use their skills and standing to "oversee a community in crisis." Du Bois argued: "The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men."

Jack's family, like that of his future wife, fit the model of the talented tenth. Both sets of parents provided their children with a comfortable life, educational opportunities both in school and at home, and a moral upbringing. Jack and Esther each grew up with the foundations to build comfortable, middle-class lives for themselves as adults. But both were exposed to extreme poverty, and both became full-time activists. Jack and Esther each carried forward the principles of their socially conscious, talented-tenth childhoods, particularly concern for the politically, socially, and economically disenfranchised, and fused them with communism. As they were becoming adults, the Great Depression, the Popular Front, the rise of the American Communist movement, the changing relationship between the united States and the Soviet union, and the ongoing black freedom movement all made clear the relevance of socialism as a means to racial equality. Familial progressivism and individual convictions, combined with the looming social, political, and economic context, made Jack and Esther's embrace of communism in the midst of the Depression a reasonable choice.

Jack's father exerted a powerful influence on his social consciousness and participation in the black freedom movement. A respected pharmacist and graduate of Howard University, James E. Jackson Sr. had earned the admiration of the black community. He was the second black pharmacist in Richmond's history. The Jackson family's standing was a product of James's education, profession, and status as a business owner along with his wife's educational achievements. His wife, Clara Kersey Jackson, also graduated from Howard. She was a member of one of the first classes to accept female students and studied in the Conservatory of Music. The couple married on December 14, 1905.

While the Jackson family held an elevated social position in the community, they were not the economic equivalent of an average middle-class white family. As the historian Martin Summers has written: "The black middle class is defined more by its self-conscious positioning against the black working class — through its adherence to a specific set of social values and the public performance of those values — than by real economic and occupational differences." James "envisioned the emergence of a large monied [sic] Negro business class as both a possibility in the American free enterprise market of the turn of the century, and as a necessity to ensure a minimum of economic independence and self-sufficiency to the Negro masses." However, his position did not divide him geographically or socially from the poor black community in Richmond. Middleclass status was no shield from the insults of white racism in the South, and the indignities of segregation shaped the family's approach to politics. James stood as a symbol of hope, compassion, and upward mobility for the community.

In early twentieth-century Richmond, a strong sense of community guided the city's African Americans through changing times. New segregation laws and white political backlash against blacks led to a reconfiguration of the city's spatial, social, and political structure, and African Americans adapted accordingly. The Jackson family lived in a neighborhood known as "Jackson Ward," a section that had "political, social, and economic importance even after white city councilmen gerrymandered the district out of existence in 1903."14 Jackson Ward lived on in memory, imagination, and mythology and represented African American claims to the social terrain of Richmond. The historians Elsa Barkley Brown and Gregg D. Kimball write that it was "a function of history, collective memory, mythology, and power ... a function of legislation, politics, and inequality ... an act undertaken by black people, a distinction that turned it into a place of congregation as well as segregation."

African Americans in Richmond made claims to community and geographic space even as white city authorities attempted to segregate and disenfranchise them. Within their community, class and gender divisions created internal conflict and drew the ire of whites. For instance, black middle- and upper-class women in Richmond strove for an image of respectability, and their dress epitomized their status within the community. They were set apart from poor and working-class women, who could not afford stylish clothing. To whites, black women who were not well dressed became the objects of spectacle and speculation, as their class status and race suggested that they might be prostitutes, criminals, or simply lazy. But stylish black women did not escape the racist scorn of whites. Whites thought that professional African American women who were well dressed threatened the status of white women, whose "money was being used to finance an extravagant, wasteful, and most important, non-subservient lifestyle of black women who more appropriately belonged in domestic work." Professionalism and middle-class status distinguished the Jackson family socially from poor blacks within the African American community and gave them some status with whites, but they were no less a part of Jim Crow's rigid social hierarchy.

In general, James had a positive rapport with powerful whites in Richmond. The head of the Cliff Weil Cigar Company described him in a reference letter as "honorable and in every way high class in his dealings ... as clean a cut merchant and darkey as [I have] ever met." While Jim Crow sharply divided Richmond and racism colored the cigar merchant's portrayal of him, James was the type of man who defied white Virginians' stereotypes about African Americans. But his good relationship with local whites did not mean that he accommodated racism. He insisted on respect from all the merchants with whom he did business and expected them to "address him as 'Mr.' or 'Dr.,' and refer to his wife as 'Mrs.'" White merchants usually complied, if begrudgingly so. Yet, in one frightening instance, bullets flew through a window a few feet from Jack's infant sister Clara's crib in the family's apartment above the store. The threat of white violence loomed large for any black businessperson who demanded equal treatment.

Beyond demanding cordiality from white merchants, James fought segregation and racism head on. He and his friends once successfully impeded the segregated trolley car transit system in Richmond for several hours, a battle in which James was "beaten bloodily and jailed, but not before he had defended himself." He believed that the problem of racism extended beyond the segregated South and spoke against World War I, declaring that it was "an imperialist war of thieving nations whose hands would be forever stained with the innocent blood of the outraged African and Asian peoples." In the 1920s, he served as treasurer of the Richmond Committee of Civic Improvement League. The organization played a leading role in protesting racially restrictive housing covenants in Richmond and won a victory in a legal battle that went to the Supreme Court.

James's drugstore served as a base for his political activities as local men converged to discuss "the whole galaxy of human knowledge and experience." His circle embraced the liberationist attitude of W. E. B. Du Bois, which was expressed in the 1906 Credo of the all-black Niagara movement. Du Bois declared: "We [i.e., black Americans] will not be satisfied to take one jot or tittle less than our full manhood rights ... and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest." Du Bois's militancy inspired James's social circle to political struggle. Like Du Bois, most of these men opposed Booker T. Washington's "policy of conciliation."

Washington was the first principal of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where young African Americans learned trade skills, teaching, and domestic work and were urged to appreciate manual labor as a path to advancement. He famously advocated the public accommodation of segregation. He earned recognition by urging southern blacks, "Cast down your bucket where you are," in the process drawing on their skills and immediate surroundings to create lives for themselves and aspiring to comfort within the confines of the South's inflexible racial order. "In all things that are purely social," Washington declared, "we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." Moderate whites responded well to Washington, and he was invited to dine at the White House in 1901 with President Theodore Roosevelt.

But many blacks, like Du Bois and James's circle, disagreed with Washington and argued that social, economic, educational, and political parity with whites was the only way forward for African Americans. They favored the "education of the whole man to enable him to exercise all the functions as a citizen of democracy." Nonetheless, Washington's tactics inspired debate. One man in James's group insisted that Washington's tactics were indeed subversive. He "would expound on the hidden meaning, the 'tricking-the-white-folk' wisdoms" of Washington's methods. This man perceptively saw resistance lurking behind Washington's public persona. While Du Bois's public posture was far more militant than Washington's, the Tuskegee principal did indeed work behind the scenes to fight legalized segregation.

James Jackson Jr. was born on November 29, 1914. He had an older sister, Alice. His younger sister, Clara, was born a few years later. His parents also had two other children, both of whom died in toddlerhood before Alice was born. As a boy, Jack observed his father, uncles, and neighbors as they debated politics and planned protests in the back room of the pharmacy. James offered his children Du Bois's teachings, feeding them a "steady diet of readings from 'As the Crow Flies,'" the youth section of the NAACP periodical The Crisis. Jack absorbed his father's militancy and developed a political astuteness that drove his intellect and activities.

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Excerpted from James and Esther Cooper Jackson by Sara Rzeszutek Haviland. Copyright © 2015 The University Press of Kentucky. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY.
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