Victoria Jackson lived by 11 commandments. The first 10 were of biblical origin, but the additional one was just as important to her: Thou shall not stay away from the polls on Election Day.
“That was how seriously she took voting,” said her daughter, Audraine Jackson. “She felt like too many people sacrificed for others to have that right and she was one of the ones who sacrificed.”
A lifelong Atlanta resident, Jackson, born in 1932, was well-schooled on the city’s racial tensions and physical barriers that separated whites and blacks. She fought against injustice and didn’t mind lending her energy to a worthy cause.
“She was a master motivator and strategist,” Atlanta City Councilman C.T. Martin said. “We would routinely put our heads together to figure out what we were going to do about one thing or another.”
Victoria Travis Jackson died July 30 from complications of a stroke. She was 80.
A funeral was held Monday at Big Bethel AME Church, followed by burial at Lincoln Cemetery. Alfonso Dawson Mortuary was in charge of arrangements.
A 1952 graduate of the former David T. Howard High School, Jackson married shortly after graduation. She also enrolled at the former Atlanta Area Tech but had to abandon her studies after she began to have children, her daughter said.
The former Victoria Travis and husband James Frank Jackson eventually raised six children. They had been married for 35 years at the time of his death of 1987. Their daughter, Deborah Jackson Sanders, died in 2007.
“And after the family, there were the businesses she and my father had,” she said. “She had to make a choice.”
The Jacksons ran a number of business concerns together, which allowed her time for her involvement with community issues, like the destruction of the Peyton Wall, the concrete barricades, erected by the city in December 1962, that separated white and black neighborhoods in southwest Atlanta. The barricades were removed in March 1963. She also worked with Martin before and during his time on the city council.
“We were just concerned parents then,” Martin said of their first meeting in the mid-’60s. “But we would go to the school board, which was predominately white, and we’d raise hell until they got it right.”
Martin said he and Jackson were part of a group that demanded better books for the schools black children attended in southwest Atlanta. Her activism continued up to 2012, where she joined protests over the construction of a discount store in the Cascade Road area.
“Even though her health was failing, she was ready to go,” the councilman said.
That same year, just before her 80th birthday, Jackson decided she would pick up her college studies again and began taking classes at Atlanta Metropolitan State College, her daughter said.
“She wanted her mind to stay sharp,” Jackson said. “And she wanted to finish her degree in accounting.”
In addition to her daughter, Jackson is survived by daughters, Kenya Baqi and Khadijah Abdur-Rahman, both of Atlanta; sons, Ricky Jackson and Michael Jackson, both of Atlanta; sisters, Gloria Travis Tanner of Denver, Colo., Joyce Travis Spearman of Decatur and Violet Travis Ricks of Atlanta; nine grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
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