Sarah R. Jackson (1876-?)

This biographical sketch first appeared on the Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States and appears here by courtesy of the publisher, Alexander Street.

By Priya Hay-Chatterjee, undergraduate student, University of Maryland

Baltimore City teacher & administrator, suffragist, and DuBois Circle member

Sarah R. Jackson was born in 1876 in Baltimore, Maryland, to Violet and Randall Jackson. She had three siblings: John Jackson, Algernon Jackson, and Minnie Jackson, later Minnie Sprigs. As far as we can tell, Jackson never married but was in 1930 the head of a household that included her sister’s six children: Andrew, 21, and Charles, 19, both laborers in a packing house, Frances, 17, Minnie, 15, Alice, 13, and James, 11.

Jackson graduated from the Baltimore Colored High School and remained devoted to her high school as the corresponding secretary for the Alumni Association of the Colored High School. Jackson was also devoted to her career as a teacher at various public schools for black children in Baltimore. In 1898 she was promoted from teaching at Colored Primary School to Colored Grammar School, and the Baltimore Sun reported subsequent promotions as well. In 1900, she became a member of the Ways and Means Committee of the Maryland Colored Teachers’ Association (MCTA). In 1903, Jackson became Assistant to the Vice President of Public School 103. Jackson also frequently spoke about her work as a teacher and administrator at local meetings of the MCTA and parents’ groups.

Jackson was active in the African American Christian community in Baltimore. She directed Sunday School programs and Christmas celebrations, often at the Bethel A.M.E. Church, and occasionally at other Baltimore City churches. In 1915, she also attended a conference of Sunday School workers to discuss workers’ problems at Bethel A.M.E Church. Her political involvement was also evident in her work with the Church, as she spoke before her colleagues and fellow churchgoers at Bethel A.M.E. Church in 1912 in support of Theodore Roosevelt’s candidacy for the presidency.

Philanthropy was important to Jackson. She donated to the India Famine Relief Fund and frequently suggested philanthropic projects to the DuBois Circle after she was inducted in 1907. The DuBois Circle was a literary and activist organization founded by the wives of men in Baltimore’s Niagara Movement. Some members of the Circle also joined the Baltimore chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People when it formed only a few years later. Partly at Jackson’s behest, the Circle did such charitable work as donating linens to local hospitals, which were frequently low on resources, and offered a scholarship annually to a Baltimore City senior high school student who had the best grades, artistic ability, and overall character.