Maynard Jackson

Maynard Holbrook Jackson Jr. was born on the twenty-third of March 1938 in Dallas, Texas, the third of six children of the Reverend Maynard Holbrook Jackson Sr. and Irene Dobbs Jackson, a professor of French at Spelman College. When Maynard was seven, in 1945, the family moved to Atlanta, where his father took the pastorship of the historic Friendship Baptist Church. Through his mother he descended from the eminent civil rights leader John Wesley Dobbs, and he came of age within a family long counted among Atlanta's Black leadership.

A precocious student, Jackson entered Morehouse College at fourteen and later earned his law degree from North Carolina Central University in 1964. He practiced law and, though defeated in a 1968 bid for the United States Senate, won election as Atlanta's vice mayor the following year, announcing the arrival of a formidable new voice in Southern politics.

In 1973 Jackson was elected mayor of Atlanta, becoming the first African American to lead a major Southern city. He served from 1974 to 1982 and returned for a third term from 1990 to 1994. His administrations transformed the city: he championed minority business participation, insisting that Black-owned firms share in public contracts, and drove the expansion of Hartsfield airport into a global hub that would carry his name.

Jackson died on the twenty-third of June 2003. Atlanta renamed its airport Hartsfield-Jackson in his honor, a fitting tribute to a builder whose vision opened doors for generations. May his name endure among the honored, a steward of dignity who made his city more just.