John Glover Jackson
*John Glover Jackson was born on this date in 1907. He was a Black Pan-Africanist historian, lecturer, teacher, and writer.
Jackson was born in Aiken, South Carolina, and raised Methodist. At age 15, his family moved to Harlem, New York, where he enrolled in Stuyvesant High School. During this time, he became interested in African American history and culture and began writing essays on the subject. His work was noticed and in 1925, while still a high school student, Jackson was invited to write for Marcus Garvey's newspaper, Negro World.
Beginning in 1930, Jackson became associated with a number of Pan-African historians, activists, and writers, including Hubert Harrison, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, John Henrik Clarke, Willis Nathaniel Huggins, Joel Augustus Rogers, and Marcus Garvey. He also authored several books on African history, promoting a Pan-African and Afrocentric view, such as Man, God, and Civilization (1972) and Introduction to African Civilizations (1974). He also became interested in Christianity's origins in the Egyptian religion.
An unapologetic atheist, he authored several books on the idea, including The African Origin of Christianity (1981) and Christianity before Christ (1985), as well as writing the foreword to Gerald Massey's Lectures (1974). He also wrote the controversial text, Was Jesus Christ a Negro? (1984), which argued that Jesus may have been a black man. In 1987, Jackson wrote a biographical article about Hubert Harrison for American Atheists entitled "Hubert Henry Harrison: The Black Socrates". In it, he praised Harrison's agnostic atheism and his educational and civil rights achievements. It was later published as a seven-page pamphlet.
During his life, Jackson also served as Associate Director of the Blyden Society and lectured at many colleges and universities throughout the United States. He promoted ideas of Afrocentrism and Jesus Christ in comparative mythology. He died on October 13, 1993.
