- Collection:
- Oral Histories of the American South: The Civil Rights Movement
- Title:
- Oral history interview with Blyden Jackson, June 27, 1991
- Creator:
- Jackson, Blyden
- Contributor to Resource:
- Parker, Freddie L.
Southern Oral History Program - Date of Original:
- 1991-06-27
- Subject:
- 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 - People:
- Jackson, Blyden
- Location:
- United States, Louisiana, East Baton Rouge Parish, 30.53824, -91.09562
United States, Louisiana, East Baton Rouge Parish, Baton Rouge, 30.44332, -91.18747
United States, Michigan, Washtenaw County, 42.25323, -83.83877
United States, Michigan, Washtenaw County, Ann Arbor, 42.27756, -83.74088
United States, North Carolina, Orange County, 36.0613, -79.1206
United States, North Carolina, Orange County, Chapel Hill, 35.9132, -79.05584
United States, Tennessee, Davidson County, Nashville, 36.16589, -86.78444 - Medium:
- transcripts
sound recordings
oral histories (literary works) - Type:
- Text
Sound - Format:
- text/html
text/xml
audio/mpeg - 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. - Metadata URL:
- http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/L-0051/menu.html
- Language:
- eng
- Extent:
- 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. - Contributing Institution:
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project)
- Rights:
-
