Bio
David H. Jackson, Jr., Ph.D.
Biosketch
Dr. David Jackson, the son of the late Rev. Dr. David H. Jackson, Sr., and Mrs. Vera Jackson Mathis, hails from Atlanta, Georgia. An honors graduate from Booker T. Washington High School in the Atlanta Public School System, he received a B.S. degree in History Education (magna cum laude) and a Master’s degree in Public Administration both from Florida A&M University (FAMU). After graduating from FAMU, Dr. Jackson worked at International Paper Company as a financial analyst for three years; after which, he taught at Watkins Overton High School in the Memphis City School system for three years. He was honored as “Most Influential Teacher” for the last two of those three years.
He earned a Ph.D., in History at the University of Memphis in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1997 when he was only twenty-eight-years-old and began his professorial career as an Assistant Professor of History at FAMU that same year. His areas of expertise are Ancient Africa with an emphasis on Egypt; Latin America with an emphasis on Brazil; and African-American history since 1865. Jackson was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in three years and full Professor in only seven years at Florida A&M University. Jackson is currently Professor of History and Chairman of the Department of History, Political Science, Public Administration, Geography and African American Studies at FAMU, a position he has held for the last eight and a half years.
Professor Jackson hit the ground running at FAMU and won the Rattler Pride Award for Community Leadership in 2000. He was also the recipient of the FAMU Teacher of the Year Award for 2000 and 2010 and the Advanced Teacher of the Year Award in 2006.
“Most recently he won the FAMU Research Award, making him the first African American at the university to be so honored.”
In April 2011 he was enshrined into the Gallery of Distinction in the College of Arts and Sciences at FAMU.
Recognized as “one of Florida A&M University’s most published professors,” Dr. Jackson has published over four dozen scholarly articles, book chapters, short essays, and book reviews, and has presented over one hundred scholarly papers and riveting speeches at professional conferences, universities, public schools, prisons, courts, churches and other venues throughout the United States. He is author or editor of five scholarly books including A Chief Lieutenant of the Tuskegee Machine: Charles Banks of Mississippi, published by the University Press of Florida in 2002; Retrieving the American Past published in 2003 by Pearson Publishing; and Go Sound the Trumpet! Selections in Florida’s African American History published by the University of Tampa Press (2005). His latest book titled Booker T. Washington and the Struggle Against White Supremacy: The Southern Educational Tours, 1908-1912 was published in 2008 by Palgrave Macmillan.
Dr. Jackson was a percussionist in Florida A&M’s Marching 100 and the symphonic band, and is a member of several social and service fraternities including Kappa Kappa Psi National Band Fraternity and Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated. He is also a 32nd degree Mason and a Shriner; likewise, he is a member of numerous honor societies and fraternities. He served on the Florida National Register Review Board from 2000-2003 and the Florida Historical Commission from 2002-2003, is a member of the University Press of Florida’s Advisory Board and is currently the Chairman of the board for the John G. Riley Center/ Museum of African American History and Culture in Tallahassee. He is also a member of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the Southern Conference on African American Studies Incorporated (for which he currently serves as vice-president), the Organization of American Historians, the Southern Historical Association, the Mississippi Historical Society, and the Florida Historical Society, to name a few.
Even more important than his own personal accolades, Dr. Jackson is most proud of the fact that since becoming a professor at FAMU he has mentored and sent over twenty-five students off to doctoral programs throughout the country where they have earned the Ph.D. mainly in History and are now working as college and university professors. Jackson is married to Sheila, and they have two children, David H. Jackson, III and Daja (Day-jah) Halima Jackson.
