Though the air hovers at 59 degrees, my Uber driver claims it feels like summer as he whisks me to meet Esther Cooper Jackson. Autumn is in its infancy here, the trees just starting to dapple themselves in gold and rusty orange.
Inside her room at an assisted-living community, Jackson greets me warmly, clasping my hands with a smile. She says to me just what I was going to say to her: "I'm so honored to meet you! He even drew a mortar and pestle, see? Come August โ "if I make it" โ Jackson will become a centenarian. In her near-century of life, she has been a writer, editor, activist and tireless freedom fighter.
In , she married James E. Jackson Jr. Though her husband has been gone for nearly 10 years, Jackson now pulls from her deep well of earned wisdom, a living legend of the civil rights era sharing her stories and their valuable lessons with all who have a mind to listen and learn. Richmond magazine: What was your childhood like? What were your parents like, and how did they influence you? My dad had been in the army, and he met my mother in Washington, D.
She was assigned to an office in D. She met my dad when he was a solider stationed in Fort Myer. They married and moved into a small house in Arlington, in an area where no black people had moved into yet.
They lived there all of their married life, until they died. That was the house I grew up in, and I went to elementary school in Arlington. Meanwhile, my sister and I enrolled in school in Washington, D. I think the influence of my parents, particularly my mother, was something that was important to me all of my life.
