Ida Louise Jackson - Oakland

Ida Louise Jackson ²Dr. Ida Louise Jackson ³

Dr. Ida Louise Jackson (October 12, 1902 – March 8, 1996) was the first Black teacher in Oakland Public Schools and was one of the first Black women to be certified to teach in the state of California.

She was born October 12, 1902 in Vicksburg, Mississippi to Pompey Jackson and Nellie Jackson. Pompey had been born into slavery, but was a preacher and a farmer. He told her "Get an education. It's the one thing the white man can't take from you." ⁶

1920s ²

After graduating from Cherry Street High School at age 14, Jackson enrolled at Rust College, but transferred to New Orleans University (later Dillard University) where she graduated with a Normal Teaching Diploma and a certificate in home economics in 1917. After being told she was wasn't qualified to teach in Oakland, she enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley in 1920, when there were only 17 Black students on campus. She co-founded the Rho chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha, one of the first two Black sororities at Berkeley. Still rebuffed by the Oakland school system, she continued at UC Berkeley in 1922 and earned her masters degree in 1924.

Six young women gathered one day in 1921 to have a photograph taken for the Blue and Gold yearbook. Beautifully dressed and comfortable together, they were charter members of Rho chapter, Alpha Kappa Alpha, the second Black sorority at Berkeley. Ida Louise Jackson, the chapter president, had borrowed $45 from her mother to pay for the portrait to appear in the student clubs section. But when the books arrived several months later, she discovered that Alpha Kappa Alpha had been excluded. Jackson was told that the picture “wasn’t representative of the student body.” Nothing could have been further from the truth. ⁴

She became the first Black woman to teach high school while getting the "more experience" that the Oakland schools said she needed. She taught for two years in Imperial Valley before returning to Oakland.

Finally in 1926, she became the first Black person to teach in the Oakland Public Schools. Dr. Jackson’s assignment to teach at Oakland’s Prescott Intermediate School "was met with protests," said Barbara K. Phillips, a former national president of Alpha Kappa Alpha, who came from North Carolina for the dedication ceremony. She described Dr. Jackson, one of her role models, as "a star in the fabric of existence." A large group of white teachers and administrators tried repeatedly to have Jackson reassigned from Prescott School, Phillips said. But her students — including white children — helped her through a period Jackson described as "the unpleasantries."

She remained the only Black teacher in Oakland schools, teaching American History at both the elementary and high school level, until 13 years later when another Black woman, Beth Pierre Wilson, was hired.

In the 1930s, she obtained her doctorate from Columbia University. She also earned a certificate from UC to be certified as a school administrator.

Dr. Jackson was also active in public health, and was the founder of the Mississippi Health Project which brought medical care to rural Mississippi, for whom she was general director for the eight years of its operation. Over 4,000 children and many adults were treated in these mobile clinics, which traveled from plantation to plantation throughout Mississippi.

As international president of her sorority (the 8th supreme basileus reference on her marker), she also started a program to train rural teachers during the Great Depression in 1934.

Dr. Jackson's written works include Development of Negro Children in Reference to Education (1923) and Librarians' Role in Creating Racial Understanding (1944). She received the Who's Who Among Colored Americans award in 1950.

In 1979 Dr. Jackson donated her ranch to U.C. Berkeley, specifying that the proceeds of its sale be used as graduate fellowships for black students pursuing degrees there.

Dr. Jackson lived at 1210 Excelsior Avenue for many of her years in Oakland.

c.1922 ⁵Dr. Ida Louise Jackson with Dr. Marcus Foster (May 11, 1973) ¹