Jackson (Vera) Collection, 1850-1999

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Summary

Title:
Vera Jackson Collection
Dates:
1850-1999
Creators:
Jackson, Vera Ruth (1911-1999)
Abstract:
The Vera Jackson Collection documents the life of Black photographer and teacher Vera Ruth Jackson. Jackson worked as a staff press photographer during the 1940s for the California Eagle, a popular black newspaper in South Los Angeles owned by Charlotta Bass. The collection largely focuses on her photography from the California Eagle, her travels, and her teaching, as well as her privately collected photography. It also includes a variety of personal and professional records that document her entire professional career, her writing, and personal interests such as travel, the arts, ancestry, and social issues. Bulk dates are from 1940 to 1999.
Extent:
34.43 linear feet and 16.4 Gigabytes
Language:
English.
Preferred citation:

For information about citing items in this collection consult the appropriate style manual, or see the Citing Archival Materials guide.

Background

Scope and content:

The Vera Jackson Collection documents the life of Black photographer and teacher Vera Ruth Jackson. Jackson worked as a staff press photographer during the 1940s for the California Eagle, a popular black newspaper in South Los Angeles owned by Charlotta Bass. The collection largely focuses on her photography from the California Eagle, her travels, and her teaching, as well as her privately collected photography. It also includes a variety of personal and professional records that document her entire professional career, her writing, and personal interests such as travel, the arts, ancestry, and social issues. Images from the California Eagle are mostly of social and community events, some with significant people in the community or of wider fame, and include several women's groups as well as portraits. From the 1950s to the 1970s, she taught elementary school for LAUSD. After retiring, she traveled extensively, including several trips to Africa. In the 1980s, she started her own business with her son Kerry called Historical Enterprises. It supplied duplications and licensing requests for their historical photography collection, comprised of Vera Jackson's photography, other collected photographers' work who shot alongside Jackson in early Black newspaper media, Kerry Jackson's photography, and photographs Jackson privately collected from family and other sources that depicted Black heritage and history. Except for Jackson's travel and family images, most of her images were created in Los Angeles. Photographic formats include prints, slides, and negatives, whereas paper records include clippings, ephemera, correspondence, and notes. The collection is arranged into two series: Personal and Professional Papers (1877-1999) and Photographic and Audiovisual Materials (1850-1999). Bulk dates are from 1940 to 1999.

Series I, Personal and Professional Papers, contains clippings, ephemera, correspondence, notes, drafts, professional records, personal records, publications, newsletters, address books, daily planners, and drawings. Clippings encompass a wide range of subjects based on Jackson's interests and issues, such as the arts, Black representation in media, education, racial equality, current events, travel, and writing. They are predominantly from the Los Angeles Times, along with the Los Angeles Sentinel and the California Eagle, with a few full issues present. Professional records and correspondence are from Jackson's photography career regarding exhibits, loans, uses, media, books, projects, and professional network; her teaching career and her own education, such as curricula, guidelines, and certificates; Historical Enterprises; her writing and efforts to get published; and other special projects, such as Black Colleges and Black Family Values. Some ephemera and records are from art institutions, galleries, and stores that she exhibited with or loaned to, purchased art from, or visited. These records are typically filed under the institution's name, whereas some of Jackson's major exhibits and publications' records are filed under their exhibit or publication title. Personal correspondence contains letters from family and friends from her early years in Kansas and later in Los Angeles. Jackson also pursued writing later in life with a goal to publish. Her writing touches on personal travels, family history and ancestry, art education, and her experience in 1940s Los Angeles. Her published articles as a freelancer most often appeared in travel and art education magazines. Jackson's writing notes, drafts, and published articles are present. For journaling, Jackson wrote on lined paper and they are referred to as personal notes.

Series II, Photographic and Audiovisual Materials, contains Jackson's earliest photography in the 1930s, her work at the California Eagle and collected prints from other photographers during that period, her images or collected prints at the schools she taught, such as Miramonte and Bellagio, her travel photography, and her images or collected prints of family, ancestry, and friends. Significant people photographed include Charlotta Bass, Jessie Mae Brown Beavers, Ralph Bunche, Benny Carter, Bobo Conner, Dorothy Dandridge, Herb Jeffries, Hattie McDaniel, War Perkins, Adam C. Powell, Lillian Randolph, Paul Robeson, Jackie Robinson, Phyllis Schuyler, Yolanda Stovall, and Dorothea Towles. Significant groups include sororities such as Iota Phi Lambda business sorority and other social or professional sororities and fraternities, Allied Arts League, Jack and Jill (of America), and several women's groups. Events include parties, business and club meetings, and weddings. Travel photography contains images from Africa including several African countries featuring certain groups such as Kenya's Wakamba and Maasai, Asia, Europe, Australia including New Guinea, Mexico, and San Francisco. It contains five subseries: Negatives, 4x5 (1920-1989), Negatives, Non-4x5 (1935-1999), Prints (1850-1999), Slides (1954-1998), and Video and Audio Recordings (1947-1993).

Subseries A, Negatives, 4x5, are located in cold storage and require 24-hour advanced notice to access. There is an index created by Vera Jackson of numeric IDs that were assigned to most of the 4x5 negatives. The numeric ID is written on the top right corner sleeve of each negative. The index gives a brief description for each negative, stating significant people, groups, and sometimes locations and events, but few dates. A majority of the 4x5 negatives are Vera Jackson's original negatives, although some copies are present. There are also negatives created by Vernon Jackson, her spouse, and possibly other family members. For negatives lacking numeric IDs, arrangement has been imposed based on generic categories Jackson commonly used or by subject or photographer's name. The subseries contains mostly 4x5 black-and-white negatives with a few color. There are also other formats present - 120mm, prints, 35mm, and slides - that are few in number and are assigned numeric IDs. Some negatives were discarded due to severe cracking from deterioration accelerated by previous poor storage conditions. Off-gassing and some warping is present.

Subseries B, Negatives, Non-4x5, contain 35mm and 120mm color and black-and-white negatives, with some transparency film present. Subjects include travel, family, school, and personal events.

Subseries C, Prints, contain prints that range in size, with most prints shot for assignment and for the California Eagle, in the size of 8x10. Personal prints such as family and travel and photographs of the schools she taught at with her students and staff are present and are usually smaller format. Many prints lack detailed original description on the back of the prints. Jackson tended to group them into generic series or categories, occasionally listed on the back. Dates present may be creation of the negative, the print, or copyright date. Since many prints were donated loose with little original description, order was strongly imposed based on generic subject matter, often according to series Jackson commonly used to group her images. Many prints present in this subseries were not photographed by Jackson but rather collected by her, for her private collection and for Historical Enterprises. Photographers who are credited include Robert (Bob) R. Douglas, Corky, Harry Adams, Irving C. Smith, J. O. Milton, Maceo B. Sheffield, Verdell Young, Howard Morehead, Oscar, Vernon Jackson, and Kerry Jackson. They are credited and filed alongside Jackson's prints. Some prints were originally stored in personal albums and have been transferred to folders with their original description. Older, card-mounted prints such as cabinet cards and the tintypes were collected by Jackson but also include personal family heirlooms. Water damage is present on some prints.

Subseries D, Slides, contains images predominantly from Jackson's travels, teaching, and personal life, copies of images from her early newspaper career, and curated selections from her oeuvre for school and library slide lectures or other purposes. Since most slides were donated loose or randomly grouped with minimal original description, order was lightly imposed based on generic subject matter, often according to series Jackson commonly used to group her images. Copies refers to slide images that show printed images in them.

Subseries E, Video and Audio Recordings, contains audiocassettes, videocassettes, microcassette, 8mm film reels, and ¼" audio reels. Subjects include personal travels, interests, and family, and professional projects for education and photography, such as an interview with Roland Charles, a photograph identification session with the California Eagle journalist Abie Robinson, and a television series, Tom Reed's For Members Only, that featured Jackson's work.

Collection folders are arranged alphabetically by title.

Biographical / historical:

Vera Ruth Jackson was born Otis Theda Ruth in Wichita, Kansas on July 21, 1911. She used Vera as her first name after primary school. She was raised by her father, Otis Garland Ruth, and grandmother, Laura McCune Ruth, after her mother, Della Leslie Johnson, died in 1919. Her family moved to Corona, California in the 1920s. She graduated from Corona High School in 1930. In 1931, she married Vernon Danfourth Jackson, born in Booneville, Missouri, who was a professional boxer, a barber, and later a long-term employee of North American Aviation and Rockwell International. They had two sons, Kerry Otis and Kendall Roger Jackson. In 1936, she worked at the Mason Music Company as a "Number Please Girl" who played vinyl records at request at jukeboxes along Central Avenue in South Los Angeles. In 1935 or 1936, Jackson attended a government-sponsored photography program taught by George Manuel. She also attended Frank Wiggins Trade School (now Los Angeles Trade-Technical College). She taught her husband photography shortly after learning. While working as a darkroom printer for freelance photographer Maceo Sheffield, she was introduced to the editor of the California Eagle, Charlotta Bass, who soon hired her as a staff press photographer. The newspaper served African Americans in South Los Angeles. Jackson worked closely with Jessie Mae Brown, the newspaper's society editor for "The Social Silhouette," and she often photographed significant persons, groups (typically women's), events within the community, parties, and celebrities in the arts and sports. Notable subjects include Jackie Robinson, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Dorothy Dandridge. She worked at the Eagle from 1942 to 1947. She was one of few female photographers in the Black press during that period.

Jackson went back to school to become an elementary school teacher. She received her BA in 1951 and MA in 1954 from Los Angeles State College (Cal State LA), focusing on elementary education and administration, as well as took courses at USC during the 1950s. She worked for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) from 1951 to 1976 as an elementary and resource teacher, and as an advisor and workshop leader for other teachers. She specialized in teaching the arts and reading. Later in her teaching and while retired, she resumed photography and submitted her work to publications as well as writing for magazines and for television. Her articles are published in Travel & Art,Design,School Arts, and Encore. She frequently wrote letters to the Los Angeles Times in criticism or commentary on a range of social issues, typically on Africa, education, race and racism, and social justice. She continued her education in the arts at UC Irvine and Riverside Community College in the 1970s and 1980s.

Jackson's photography, paintings, and sculpture have been exhibited at the California African American Museum (1983-1984), Los Angeles Public Library, Vernon Library (1945-1946, travel slide show in 1979), Riverside Community College Art Department (1979-), Black Gallery (1984-), Museum of African American Art (1983-1985), Riverside Art Center and Museum, Great Western Savings (1984), California Museum of Photography (1984-), Cinque Gallery in New York (1986), Oakland Gallery (1986), UCLA (1987), Nigritian Embassy in Los Angeles (1988), Los Angeles City Hall Bridge Gallery (1989-1990), Akron Art Museum (1997), and Santa Barbara Museum of Art (1997). Major exhibits include "The Tradition Continues: California Black Photographers" (1983), "Black Angelenos: The Afro-American in Los Angeles, 1850-1950" (1988-1989), and "A History of Women Photographers" (1997). Jackson and her works are also featured in Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe's book Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers (1986), Tom Reed's 1990s television series For Members Only, Donald Bogle's book Dorothy Dandridge: A Biography (1997), and Stanley Nelson's film The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords (1999).

An avid traveler, Jackson visited Africa four times and several other countries in Asia, Europe, and Australia, predominantly in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1980s, she started a business with her son, Kerry, named Historical Enterprises to promote hers and other photographers' Black press images as well as images depicting Black heritage and families since the 19th century. Jackson valued photography as a means to humanize viewers, and recognized her own press photography as historical records. Jackson was a member of National Association of University Women, NAACP Los Angeles, Friendly Educators, and Association of Retired Teachers. Jackson lived in Corona for most of her life, and she also lived in South Los Angeles and Baldwin Hills. She died in 1999.

Acquisition information:
Toi and Jessica Jackson, 2024
Processing information:

Elizabeth Peattie, 2025

Arrangement:

Series I: Personal and Professional Papers, 1877-1999

Series II: Photographic and Audiovisual Materials, 1850-1999

Subseries A: Negatives, 4x5, 1920-1989

Subseries B: Negatives, Non-4x5, 1935-1999

Subseries C: Prints, 1850-1999

Subseries D: Slides, 1954-1998

Subseries E: Video and Audio Recordings, 1947-1993

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

About this collection guide

Date Encoded:
This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2025-12-02 15:01:40 -0800 .

Access and use

Restrictions:

This collection is open for research use.

Terms of access:

Copyright for unpublished materials authored or otherwise produced by the creator(s) of this collection has been transferred to California State University, Northridge. Copyright status for other materials is unknown. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.) beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owners. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.

Preferred citation:

For information about citing items in this collection consult the appropriate style manual, or see the Citing Archival Materials guide.

Location of this collection:
18111 Nordhoff Street
Northridge, CA 91330, US
Contact:
(818) 677-4594
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