Vera Jackson (1911-1999)

Born in Wichita, Kansas, on July 21, 1911, Vera Jackson had a happy childhood until her mother died when Vera was five years of age. Later, her father, Otis Ruth, decided to move to a farm in Corona, California, with his four children, one boy and three girls (Vera being the oldest girl). In 1936, after marrying Vernon Jackson and having two children, Kerry and Kendall, she enrolled in a government program to learn to use the camera, print, and enlarge.

She worked as a printer for freelance photographer Maceo Sheffield, and through his work for the California Eagle, she met publisher-editor Charlotta Bass, who eventually hired Vera as a staff photographer primarily for the society section of the paper. Jackson, like everybody who worked at the Eagle, felt the influence of Charlotta Bass’s commitment to fight for racial justice in a segregated city.

“I was never quite the same,” Jackson told Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, author of Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers. “None of us were after coming under the influence of Mrs. Bass. She was way ahead of her time in civil rights. She was fighting first one cause then another before it was popular to do so.”

Besides photographing local and visiting celebrities, Jackson created featured series that uplifted the image of the community, like “The Best Dressed” and “The First Achievements.”

In the 1950s, Jackson became a teacher after receiving a BA from Cal State University, Los Angeles, and an MA from the University of Southern California. During her teaching years, she continued doing photography for several magazines and for exhibitions. An avid traveler, she traveled several times to different parts of Africa and always with a camera.

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