Luther Jackson, Jr.

At Black Mountain

Luther Porter Jackson Jr. joined the student body in the fall of 1946 with the intention of staying full-time. He had a recommendation letter from Percy Hayes Baker in his application; Baker taught at BMC in 1945. Mrs. Baker wrote for his application, "he entered college too young, with a weak high school background, he has always been too much of an individualist to keep step. However, I think that he has keen intelligence, and his three years in the Marines have made him a much more serious young man."

He applied hoping to take courses in journalism and writing, as he was involved in his university paper at Fisk. His mother and father were both educators, his mother at Fisk at the time and later Virginia State, and his father also at Virginia State. He shared in his application, "I hope to develop sound study habits at Black Mountain. I understand that the College environment is very conductive to study. I am full of ambition, but as yet have not received the external or internal stimuli recursary for accomplishment. I think that Black Mountain might supply these needs."

After his first semester at Black Mountain, he fell ill and pushed off further enrollment in the fall and and dropped out officially by 1948. He shared in a letter to Dave Corkran on June 22, 1948, "I shall always regard Black Mountain as a hell-of-an-experience, but nevertheless a good one." While at BMC, he took a writing course with MC Richards, Comparative Religion with Herbert A. Miller, Intro to American Labor with Neibyl, and participated in the work program.

After BMC

Partial obituary shared in the New York Times, "After a stint at IBM in Armonk and a Russell Sage Fellowship at Rutgers University, Luther moved on to the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where he served as professor, mentor, confidant and friend to hundreds of young journalists until his retirement in 1992. He was the school's first African-American professor. Born in Chicago on March 7, 1925, he graduated from Virginia State University in 1949 and attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina before graduating from Columbia's School of Journalism in 1951.

Luther served as a United States Marine Corps sergeant in the Pacific Theater during World War II. He is a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity; he married Nettie Lee of Petersburg in 1952. A community activist wherever he lived, Luther followed closely in the footsteps of his parents: Luther Porter Jackson, head of the History Department at Virginia State, and Johnnella Frazer Jackson, assistant professor of music at Virginia State and organist at the Gillfield Baptist Church of Petersburg. Both his parents were civil rights activists. A life member of the NAACP and a leader in the New York chapter of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, Luther also researched and wrote about historical black towns in the U.S. including Boley, Okla., and Mound Bayou, Miss. He also shared with everyone his passions for education, history, community service, social justice, integrity and jazz (especially Duke Ellington)."

Biography written by Amanda Hartman.