Southern Negro Youth Congress and the Communist Party: Papers of James and Esther Cooper Jackson
Who were James and Esther Cooper Jackson?? James Jackson (1914-2007) and Esther Cooper Jackson (1917-2022) were a married African American couple who devoted their lives to fight for equality. The Jacksons saw a path to racial equality through the Communist Party. They were founders and leaders of the Southern Negro Youth Congress (1937-1948).
James Jackson was a former official of the American Communist Party. In 1951, he was indicted under the Smith Act and forced underground for a number of years and then imprisoned. His conviction, along with those of other Communist leaders, was later overturned.
Esther Cooper Jackson served as Executive Secretary of the Southern Negro Congress from 1942-1946. She also co-founded and served as the managing editor from 1961-1986 of Freedomways, an influential African American political and cultural quarterly.
This collection, another from Archives Unbound, contains clippings (articles by and about Jackson), correspondence of both Esther and James Jackson, including the Jacksons’ voluminous World War II correspondence with each other, James Jackson’s lectures (typescripts and audiocassettes), research notebooks, speeches, and writings (published and unpublished), subject files, correspondence, internal documents and printed ephemera pertaining to the Southern Negro Youth Congress, and to Freedomways, legal and other materials pertaining to the Smith Act indictments of Jackson and other communists, Communist Party internal documents, many of a programmatic nature, and memorabilia and other biographical materials.
Researchers seeking more context about the lives of the Jacksons might also checkout the book , James and Esther Cooper Jackson: love and courage in the Black freedom movement.
