Richard E. Jackson, JD: 5th District

Richard E. Jackson, a son of Nashville, has made a lasting imprint on higher education administration, the legal community, and a number of grassroots efforts. For the past seven years Jackson has served as the executive vice president for Administration, Finance, and Legal Affairs at American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee, where he has oversight of all the college's non-academic operations. Prior to that, he was special assistant to the president at Middle Tennessee State University where he oversaw issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion. For eight years, Jackson was Austin Peay State University's vice president for legal affairs and strategic planning and before that its senior advisor to the president for Diversity, Affirmative Action and Legal Affairs. One would be remiss if I did not call attention to Jackson's major contribution to one of the nation's most prestigious medical schools—serving as the vice president for Policy Management and Legal Affairs as well as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at historically Black Meharry Medical College during David Satcher, MD's, presidency (former US Surgeon General). As general counsel Jackson coordinated the negotiations with the city of Nashville, resulting in the historic consolidation of the city's acute care hospital services into renovated facilities on the campus of Meharry. Finally, Brother Jackson is a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, one of the nation's oldest honor societies for leadership. Below is an interview that spanned over the course of a week in mid-April of 2021.

Judson L. Jeffries:

Good Evening Brother Jackson, I appreciate your willingness to be a part of this project.

Richard Jackson:

Thank you very much for including me, I'm humbled, I really am.

JLJ:

Let's get right to it if you don't mind.

RJ:

I don't mind at all.

JLJ:

You're a graduate of Vanderbilt University, aka the Harvard of the South [laughter]. What was your major Brother Jackson?

RJ:

Political science.

JLJ:

You must have had really good grades to have been accepted into Vanderbilt.

RJ:

Yes, I did, I graduated as my school's valedictorian.

JLJ:

Whaaat? You were your school's valedictorian Brother Jackson?

RJ:

In fact, I was the first African American ever to graduate number 1 in his class at an integrated high school in Nashville.

JLJ:

What high school was that Brother Jackson?

RJ:

Nashville Maplewood High School.

JLJ:

With those kinds of credentials, you could have gotten into darn near any college in the country.

RJ:

I'd like to think so.

JLJ:

So, what year do you enroll in Vanderbilt?

RJ:

1968.

JLJ:

And graduated four years later?

RJ:

Right, graduated in 1972.

JLJ:

What was it like going to a lily-white southern school like Vanderbilt University? Now, we all know that Vanderbilt is located in the city of Nashville, but it certainly didn't and still doesn't reflect the city's racial composition.

RJ:

No, it didn't, not even close.

JLJ:

What was it like being a student at Vanderbilt during the late 1960s and early 1970s?

RJ:

It wasn't easy, that's for sure. At any one time there probably were no more than 60 Black students during a given year and may have been as few as 25 during a given year. One year, and I'm positive about this, there were fewer than 20 Black men in the student body.

JLJ:

Talk a little bit about the climate, Brother Jackson, if you would please.

RJ:

Not a comfortable environment Brother Jeffries, not a comfortable environment at all. But let me just say this—I had attended a summer program at Vanderbilt, so I knew something about Vanderbilt, the school wasn't a total surprise to me. I had made up my mind that Vanderbilt was not going to affirm my self-worth.

JLJ:

What did you do in order to mitigate the kind of impact that a school like Vanderbilt could have had on your psyche?

RJ:

I decided that I wasn't going to live on campus, I wasn't going to be a resident student...