Professor Maurice Jackson has a long history of public service, as well as his extensive research on African-American history. (Photo: Claire Callagy)
Insight: Professor Maurice Jackson
If you weren't a professor or activist, what would you be doing?
If were not a professor and had the talent, I would be a jazz musician by night and a novelist by day—and practice my pool game.
What are your favorite things about Georgetown University?
Watching students who are serious about making a difference in people’s lives grow intellectually and talking with my buddy, the master professor and teacher Richard Stites. [Also] going with my wife to GU basketball games—when I can afford the tickets.
If you could have dinner with any famous people in the world, dead or alive, who would they be and why?
Alive: Magic Johnson. I think that he does a lot with creating jobs and with AIDS awareness and he just seems to enjoy life and people. [I would like to talk to] Oprah Winfrey about mobilizing well-off Blacks to "lift as they rise" (in the words of Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, 1863-1954), Wynton Marsalis [about] the joys of music, President Obama about the grand possibilities, and Dr. Anthony Fauci of [the National Institutes of Health] NIH on preventative healing measures for poor folks. [I'd also like to meet] Angela Davis.
Dead: [I would like to have] a political discussion with Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon, Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, Karl Marx, Martin Luther King Jr., Ho Chi Minh, and W.E.B. DuBois. [I would like to have] a discussion with Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Sarah Vaughn about the wonders of jazz music.
How has the election of President Obama affected your work?
It has not yet, but hopefully it will inspire African-American men, and especially […] youth, to stay in school, to carry themselves with the fullest of dignity […] to never give up, to work hard, to take care of their children and their families and to be productive members of their communities, so they can help change the word for the better.
What is your favorite kind of junk food?
Bens' Chili Dog with everything on it and a strawberry milkshake.
Feature Story
Professor Maurice Jackson Sheds New Light on an Early Abolitionist
With the election of the first African-American president, many in the United States see renewed evidence and hope that progress is being made in erasing the ugly effects of racism.