DON JACKSON
1938-2024
What problems would Don Jackson be taking on if he were still here?
He’d be talking about jobs, particularly the number of Black people working (or not) on construction sites or for the police and fire departments. That’s according to the Rev. Marvin Hightower, who succeeded him as president of the Peoria NAACP chapter, and anybody else who’s been within Jackson’s earshot for more than five decades.
He’d be talking about housing, particularly the area’s largest anti-poverty agency’s plans to withdraw from its local affordable housing initiatives, says McFarland Bragg, former executive director of Peoria Citizens Committee for Economic Opportunity, the agency where Jackson served on the board for decades. “He’d be salty about that.”
Of course, he’d be talking about politics, from the dire impact of a second Trump presidency to the importance of voting in upcoming local elections.
The best way to remember Don Jackson, the best way to honor him, is to continue the fights he carried on, says his son Dale.
Donald R. Jackson was 86 when he died Nov. 20. A labor law and civil rights attorney more than 50 years, president of the local NAACP chapter two decades, and president of the Illinois State Conference of NAACP from 2004 to 2011, he embodied the spirit, responsibilities and sacrifice of those who came before him. He won notable victories for union workers of all races, yet he rarely missed a chance to mention people like Harry Sephus and John Gwynn, stalwart civic leaders and past NAACP presidents, or Frank Campbell, the Tri-County Urban League’s first director, and their struggles to open opportunities for Black Peorians in employment, housing and education.
Two steps forward …
It was common to hear him worry that the NAACP was still fighting many of the same battles he thought had been won years ago. His ancestors fought similar battles more than a century ago. A great-great-grandfather, Thomas Lindsay, one of Peoria’s earliest residents, was part of a push to integrate public schools as early as 1871. His great-grandfather, Henry Gibson, was Peoria’s first Black constable, the first-known Black elected official, and, in 1904, the first to win a civil rights lawsuit. His great-grandmother, Julia Lindsay Gibson, a business owner active in the Black Women’s Club Movement, lived by its motto, “Lifting As We Climb,” and helped found the group that started what eventually became Carver Community Center.
Jackson never truly retired. His battery just gave out, officially due to poor health, but more likely caused by the death of his wife, Ernestine Humes Jackson, who, in many ways, made it possible for him to be who he was and do what he did. They had been married 62 years when she passed in 2023. Ernestine was a force for equal opportunity in her own right. Together, they were electric. Mrs. Jackson helped spark change from within the system as the City of Peoria’s first director of fair employment and housing and in similar positions throughout central Illinois. Mr. Jackson was on the outside, known as an attorney willing to do battle on behalf of the underdog. The pair played key roles in kick-starting or mentoring the careers of a younger generation of Black lawyers, judges and elected officials, including Peoria’s first Black and first woman mayor, Rita Ali. Jackson helped found the city’s first Black law firm with Clifton Mitchell and Glenn Collier, now a retired judge.
Urban Leaguer
Both Jackson’s mother, the late Kathlyn Williams, and Sam Petty, his friend of 80 years, spoke of his temper and stubborn determination in a 1985 Journal Star profile. “I guess it’s my nature to want to fight a system that’s unfair,” Jackson said at the time.
He graduated from Manual High School in 1956, joined the U.S. Navy, returned to Peoria and worked a variety of jobs before landing at the Urban League. There, he helped more than 200 women and minorities gain union jobs through the Urban League’s pioneering Labor, Education and Apprenticeship Program (LEAP). “He was responsible for the inroads of Blacks in many of the skilled trades,” Campbell said then.
By then, Jackson decided relying on the goodwill of the White community wasn’t enough to resolve the economic problems of the Black community. He had attended Bradley University part-time for nine years when he finally graduated in 1970. In his early 30s, with three young sons and his wife’s support, he left for the University of Illinois School of Law. He returned to Peoria in 1974 and worked for the National Labor Relations Board for a few years.
When he decided to go into private practice, he recalled being told labor unions would not accept Black or women lawyers to represent them. He didn’t listen to the warning, and apparently neither did many labor unions. One of his most high-profile victories came in 1982 when he and Teamsters’ Brewery Workers Local 770 reached a multi-million settlement with Pabst Brewing Co. after the company closed its plant in Peoria Heights.
Area icon
John Stenson, who retired as Peoria’s first Black police chief, credits Jackson and the late Al Hooks as two of Peoria’s strongest voices for hiring and promoting Black police officers. Jackson was on the legal team, led by Andy Hale, that worked on the wrongful conviction case of the late Cleve Heidelberg, who served almost 50 years in prison for the murder of a Peoria County police sergeant.
Fairness mattered most to Jackson. Friends and colleagues say some of his finest work was behind the scenes and much of it was unpaid — his work with the NAACP, for example.
No mention of Don Jackson is complete without a good golf story. He was known to accuse a golf course itself of unfairness. Nor is his story complete without a word about he and his wife’s joint love affair with the Heritage Ensemble. They were founding members and served on its board of directors.
Jackson sang bass, says choir director Sharon Reed. Other choir members teasingly accused her of showing favoritism to the bass section. “And they were my favorites, they were the root of everything we were doing.”
Indeed, Jackson’s voice was at the root of Peoria’s major issues for most of his life.