By most accounts, Maynard Holbrook Jackson, Jr. should have been a preacher.
Descended from three generations of Baptist ministers, Jackson recalled in one interview in 1988 that he was all but certain at a young age he’d be a faith leader like his father and grandfather before him.
“I’ve always known I was destined for some sort of public service. Whether it meant in elected office, or in the ministry or at the bar as an attorney,” Jackson said. “Trying to use the skills that I had, and the value system that I was taught by my family, to change things for the better for those who were the most oppressed.”
Instead, Jackson became the first Black mayor in the South and served three-terms as mayor of the city of Atlanta after being elected in 1973. During his 12 years as the city’s leader, Jackson spearheaded a political, economic and cultural revolution that hinged on mending strained race relations and building Atlanta’s reputation as a Black Mecca.
Five decades later, during the 50th anniversary of Jackson’s historic election, we explore the moment that catapulted Jackson to office, the obstacles he faced as mayor and the legacy he left on the new American South.
Growing up in the deeply segregated south, Jackson’s family had strict rules to never bow to the white power structure.
When he and his grandfather, John Wesley Dobbs, were told they’d have to wait for help in the back of downtown’s Thom McAn shoe store, they took their money elsewhere. Once a woman Jackson was dating in the 1950s wanted to see a movie in the Fox Theatre, so he bought her a ticket but sent her in alone after refusing to enter the building through the side steps.
Dr. Maurice Hobson, an associate professor of Africana studies and historian at Georgia State University, said Jackson was born into the bloodline of an influential, progressive-thinking family.
“To fully understand Maynard Jackson’s trajectory we have to get a full scale understanding of his grandfather, John Wesley Dobbs,” Hobson said. “Politically, John Wesley Dobbs was one of the greatest Black surrogates across the American South.
“If you wanted to get it done in Georgia, you’d have to go through Dobbs.”
Members of the Dobbs family describe being born into the name as “an honor.” With Jackson being the first male grandchild in a half-century, the family made the cross-country trek to see him like it was Christmas, after his mother Irene gave birth in Dallas on March 23rd, 1938.
Jackson’s father, Maynard Jackson Sr., was a prominent pastor of Friendship Baptist Church, but died when the younger Jackson was just 15 years old, leaving his young son in the care of his mother, aunts and, most notably, his grandfather. Dobbs’ influential teachings grew to become a cornerstone of Jackson’s ideology.
“Mr. Dobbs stepped up and his philosophy was around what he called the three B’s: the book, the ballot and the buck,” said William Clement, former president of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company and Jackson’s cousin and close confidant. “He thought that this was the way people of color could uplift themselves and enhance their future, economically and otherwise.”
Credit: Special to the AJC
Credit: Special to the AJC
Dobbs was lovingly referred to as the “unofficial mayor of Sweet Auburn Avenue” — a name he coined for the vibrant Black community on the east side of downtown that was home to Martin Luther King, Jr.
Those who knew him refer to Jackson’s grandfather as “a kingmaker” who created the Atlanta Negro Voters League that endorsed candidates and mobilized Black voters to the polls. Oftentimes, he would meet with white ministers under the cloak of darkness to avoid segregation laws.
“John Wesley Dobbs had this ability to be able to go across the aisle and to get white people to partner with him,” Hobson said. “So Maynard Jackson comes out of that tradition.”
Some may argue Maynard was set up for political success at a time when ideas around race relations were changing — and from being born into a family on the front lines of that change. But others say he was more than his background.
“Maynard was very brilliant,” said his wife, Valerie Jackson. “Maynard was in Morehouse College at the age of 14 — graduating at 18. And it’s just evident that there had to be an exceptionally smart man to do some of the things that he did.”
The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis came at a crucial moment in Jackson’s life. The gunshot rang out just after his daughter, Brooke, was born and Jackson went straight from the hospital bedside to graveside for the Civil Rights icon’s funeral.
“I spent three days thinking about what I was gonna do with my life,” Jackson said during an interview when he was 50 years old. “And decided that politics, although not perfect, was the best available non-violent means of changing how we live.”
So, Atlanta’s soon-to-be mayor borrowed $2,500 from a friend for qualifying to run for the U.S. Senate against Herman Talmadge — a staunch segregationist whose family was a vestige of plantation politics.
Just 30-years-old at the time he first entered politics, Jackson won less than one-third of the statewide vote in his underfunded campaign but easily carried the city of Atlanta. In a South still reeling from the Jim Crow era, the swell of Black metro voters proved what Jackson had been hypothesizing: Atlantans were ready for change.
“The poor people across the state said there’s something special about this man,” Hobson said.
Charting new territory
At 20 years old, Jackson was peddling encyclopedias door-to-door as a salesman for the P.F. Collier Company. The gig was to help pay his way through North Carolina Central University Law School.
“It’s one thing to get poor Black folk to buy a Bible, but it’s another thing to get poor Black folk to invest in encyclopedias,” said Former Atlanta Mayor and U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young. “You had to be quite a salesman to do that.”
By that time, Jackson had nearly grown into his full stature. Friends and family describe the 6-foot-4 man as “larger than life” with a booming voice and hazel green eyes. Young said that, like Former President Jimmy Carter, Jackson could strike up a conversation with anyone.
“They went everywhere, they walked the streets and went into kitchens,” he said. “They didn’t leave a single hand unshaken.”
Selling votes was a lot like selling encyclopedias. Maynard wanted Black residents struggling to get by to invest in a new future. But throughout his climb to the highest office in Atlanta, he consistently bucked both white and Black city leaders who held the most power in the political system Jackson was eying for reform.
Credit: AJC file
Credit: AJC file
Historians say Jackson dodged the Good Old Boy traditions that were upheld by both the mayor and Atlanta City Council. After winning his first city election as vice mayor in 1969, he dropped in to be the tie-breaking vote in many council meetings.
“It becomes clear right off, that Maynard Jackson is going to be a thorn in the side and was looking at being mayor of Atlanta,” Hobson said. “Maynard did not care about the pecking order.”
John White Park in southwest Atlanta became the pseudo-campaign headquarters for Jackson’s mayoral bid once he announced his campaign on March 28, 1973. Much like high-profile Democrat’s in Georgia today, Jackson, Clement and his group of advisors hashed out a plan for how to get Black voters to the polls.
“We were charting new territory,” Clement said. “And the key in any election is to get your voters out.”
And so they did.
Jackson was elected the first Black mayor of Atlanta by winning nearly 60% of the vote. His inauguration itself shattered norms. He skipped the traditional City Hall ceremony for an extravagant gala at the Civic Center where thousands of people came to watch.
“It is a real moment of not only political symbolism,” Hobson said, “But Maynard Jackson walked into City Hall and he really had a vision for what the city could be.”
But Jackson’s campaign for mayor against incumbent Sam Massell gave insight into the strained political environment he was looking to change. A two-page ad in The Atlanta Journal supporting Massell published in October 1973, and bore the foreboding title: “Atlanta’s Too Young to Die.”
“The thought of a Maynard Jackson-Hosea Williams administration is scaring some Atlantans to death,” it read. “And if such a team attempts to lead this city, many blacks and whites alike fear a new trend of flight from Atlanta.”
Credit: AJC archives
Credit: AJC archives
Not only was Jackson walking into the mayor’s office, but Atlanta’s charter was going through a significant shift from a weak mayor form of government to a strong mayor — meaning unprecedented levels of power with the mayor’s office responsible for managing all city departments. Before the change, City Council held most of the authority.
Jackson’s former Chief of Staff Walter Huntley described the change as “unprecedented.”
“The mayor was new to his position and he was Black, the President of Council Wyche Fowler was new to his position, and eight of the 18 city council members were new to their position — and they were half Black and half white,” Huntley said.
“You overlay all of that issue of race, there was tremendous expectation on the Black constituency,” he said. “And on the other side, kind of a lot of anxiety and trepidation from the white constituency.”
Jackson said once that being a city’s first Black mayor is something you only wish on your enemy.
“All of a sudden, I became the mayor of not just Atlanta, but for Black people in Georgia and even some neighboring states,” Jackson said in 1988. “That was an extraordinary burden.”
Credit: AJC archives
Credit: AJC archives
It was a burden that bore massive successes — like Jackson’s commitment to increasing Black wealth through bolstering minority contracts at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and overhauling a police force that still had ties to the Klu Klux Klan.
But it also caused uncomfortable divides.
Jackson faced extreme scrutiny during the Atlanta child murders from 1979 through 1981, when parents of the victims said he wasn’t doing enough.
In reality, Jackson was scared, too.
The mayor, Andrew Young and many other elected officials had young sons at the time. When a call came through from the chief of police sharing the news about another death, he shared the fear with Black parents around the city.
“Maynard would say the two hardest political jobs are the President of the United States and mayor,” Huntley said. “Because the mayor is closest to the people. If someone is shot or killed you have to deal with that.”
The weight of being mayor wasn’t lost on Jackson’s family. He had three children — Elizabeth, Brooke, and Maynard III — with his first wife, Burnella “Bunnie” Hayes Burke. He had two more children, Valerie Amanda and Alexandra, with his second wife Valerie Richardson.
Credit: AJC archives
Credit: AJC archives
Brooke Edmund Jackson spent a lot of time with her father in the car. It was not unusual for Jackson to load his children into the backseat on a Saturday morning and go for a drive.
“He always had a notepad with him,” Brooke Edmund Jackson said. “And there would always be a theme for the music that day — it would either be classical or blues.”
The family drives doubled as a weekly check-in for the mayor as he traversed roadways around the city. He’d scribble notes on things like pervasive potholes or blighted properties.
“I learned so much during those rides about his perspective on life — about morality and right and wrong,” she said. “He did spend a lot of time talking to us about how to be a good person.”
Credit: Jerome McClendon / AJC File
Credit: Jerome McClendon / AJC File
And Jackson’s family could always expect him home every evening — even if he had to head back to City Hall afterward. At 6:30 p.m. sharp, the Jackson household had a tradition — singing grace over dinner.
Maynard’s aunt, Mattiwilda Dobbs, was the first Black woman to perform at the La Scala opera house in Italy. Jackson, too, sang in the Morehouse glee club.
“That’s one of the things I treasured most is the memory of us singing the grace with those beautiful voices and melodies,” Valerie Jackson said. “It was almost spiritual.”
‘What would Maynard do?’
When Jackson was debating a run for a third mayoral term, he sat down with the most important person that would have to weigh in: his wife.
“He said: ‘You know how people talk about hearing a call for the ministry?’” Valerie Jackson recalled. “And he said: ‘Well, I haven’t really heard a call yet, but I have been hearing whispers. And I really feel that I need to go back into the public, to serve the masses of people.’”
The decision came saddled with a “very serious pay cut” from his job as an attorney at a Chicago firm, and the reality that his life would return quickly to the chaotic back-to-back scheduling of politicking — all while Atlanta still balanced on the precipice of the permanent cultural shift Jackson had started.
Credit: AJC File Photo
Credit: AJC File Photo
“But I didn’t really even have to think about it,” Valerie said. “I told him: ‘We have a lot of good, excellent ministers out there, but we don’t have a whole lot of really good politicians.’
“It might have eaten him alive if he had not done it — wondering what if?” Valerie said. “Atlanta was his heart. He loved this city, more than just as a mayor — this was his home.”
It wasn’t lost on Jackson or his successors that the progress Atlanta’s first Black mayor fought to build for Black residents could easily be walked back.
“It was very important that we not go back on the progress that he made and the progress that he made was controversial,” Young said.
Jackson started a long lineage of Black political power, he said, that’s yet to be broken.
“It’s no accident that we’ve had seven black mayors in a row,” Young said. “Maynard created the pattern, the mold.”
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Atlanta’s mayoral dynasty after Jackson included the city’s first female mayor Shirley Franklin, former mayors Bill Campbell, Kasim Reed and Keisha Lance Bottoms and current Mayor Andre Dickens.
Dickens may be tall, too, but described Jackson as “a giant of a man, a giant of a mayor and a giant of a leader of this city.” Living up to Jackson’s legacy is a little like living up to an older brother, Dickens said, where more often than not you’re asking yourself: “What would Maynard do?”
“There is not a day that passes by in the city of Atlanta, that I am not blessed to stand on the shoulders of a giant,” Dickens said.
And Maynard’s status as the powerbroker in the new American South meant offering advice to politicians across the country who, Jackson’s family remembers, would call at all hours of the night.
Those calls didn’t stop until June 23, 2003, when Jackson died of a heart attack in the airport in Washington, D.C. His daughter, Brooke, who grew into Jackson’s business partner, happened to be there visiting a friend at the same time.
“I jumped in a car and went over and saw my dad,” she said. “He was already gone by the time I got there. But I was able to see him and give him a kiss.”
As Atlanta prepared to host the Democratic National Convention in 1988, Jackson sat on the top floor of the Equitable Bank Building in downtown. Fifteen years before his death, the iconic Atlanta mayor thought about what the city meant to him.
“A city which has a heritage that is not easily explained but is profound and powerful and intriguing and interesting,” he told an interviewer with C-SPAN. “They all boil down, in my opinion, to an extraordinary blend for good.
“Atlanta’s not perfect, but I honestly believe that it is the best city in this country.”
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