Betty Uzman, William Maxwell, Eudora Welty, and Jesse C. Jackson

All of us in Welty studies bemoan the retirement of Betty Uzman at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Betty has offered invaluable assistance over many years to many scholars as they worked with the department's Welty Collection. Betty's parting gift to us is a new discovery.

In November 1966, William Maxwell sent Eudora Welty an item he thought exemplified the high regard elicited by a Welty story that had just been published in the New Yorker. "Here is something," he noted. The specific "something" was a brief letter of praise for "The Demonstrators," signed by Jesse Jackson. Eudora promptly xeroxed the letter and sent a copy to her friend Mary Lou Aswell. Maxwell, Welty, Aswell, and all of us who have since seen the letter were under the assumption that it had come from the civil rights leader Jesse L. Jackson; indeed, Welty referred to the letter's author as one of the "rights leaders." But thanks to Betty Uzman, we now know that the Jesse Jackson who sent this letter was instead the novelist and historian Jesse C. Jackson. This Jesse Jackson wrote seven young adult novels focusing on African-American youths coping with life in a whitedominated society. He also published a biography of Mahalia Jackson and a historical work titled Black in America: A Fight for Freedom, written with Elaine Landau.

Here is Betty's own account of her sleuthing. She reports that she

came across a photocopy of a letter from the New Yorker attached to a photocopy of William Maxwell's letter to Eudora Welty of November 30 [1966].

The November 29, 1966, letter was a thank-you note sent by the New Yorker to Mr. Jesse Jackson at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., thanking him for "letting us know how you felt about Eudora Welty's 'The Demonstrators,'" and letting him know they were sending the letter on to Miss Welty.

An internet search subsequently revealed that the Jesse Jackson employed at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., from 1951–1968, was an African American writer of young adult literature (Call Me Charley and many others), not the Civil Rights activist who worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

We are indebted to Betty for her attention to the New Yorker's thank you note, for her tracking down the address of Jackson the novelist, and for her emendation to the history of "The Demonstrators" and its reception. I am personally grateful for this opportunity to correct erroneous references to Jesse L. Jackson in my own publications. Now it is time for an enterprising scholar to tell us more about Jesse C. Jackson and his work. Unfortunately, Betty will not be at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to assist in such an endeavor.