Angela Jackson (1951- ) Papers

Scope and Contents

The Biographical Materials section contains a biographical sketch of Angela Jackson, material regarding her family, education, personal correspondence, and magazines, largely spanning the dates 1991 to 2015. Documentation on Angela Jackson's family includes information about reunions and genealogy of the Robinson and Jackson families. The material regarding Jackson's education spans 1968-1980s. They are predominately essays from undergraduate English courses at Northwestern University. They also include her master's thesis at the University of Chicago regrading changes in Yoruba religion in Nigeria and Brazil. Also related are drafts of the thesis as well as notes and reference material. This section also includes poetry Jackson wrote at the Bennington Writing Seminar, including editorial notes. The bulk of the biographical materials section consists of personal correspondence. These folders are arranged alphabetically, and span the dates 2010 to 2014. Some notable correspondents are Jeff Donaldson, Reginald Gibbons, and Patricia Spears Jones. This section also includes magazines that feature Jackson. These publications mention festivals at which Jackson was scheduled to speak or which she was to attend, often including discussion of her recently-published work and brief biographies. The pages in which Jackson is mentioned are marked. The section also includes birthday and thank-you cards, as well as correspondence about submissions to publishers.

The Writings section includes several manuscripts and drafts of poetry, prose, plays, articles/essays and screenplays, both published and unpublished, written by Angela Jackson. Many of the manuscripts include handwritten drafts and notes. Notably, this section has several drafts of Jackson's novel Where I Must Go, manuscripts of the poetry collection The Midnight Market, and drafts and correspondences regarding the play Shango Diaspora. The section also includes several romance novels for which Jackson wrote under the pseudonym, Lia Sanders, in collaboration with Sandra Jackson-Opoku, as well as the manuscript for the romance novel Nora, Who Is A Woman, which Jackson wrote under the pseudonym Marci St. George. This section also includes manuscripts and drafts by other writing such as Johari M. Amini-Hudson, Morgan Johnson and Melvin Lewis, whose work was published alongside Jackson's in literature/poetry journals.

The Teaching section contains correspondence concerning Jackson's hiring, along with brochures and pamphlets on events taking place at the institutions. Some folders have poetry by Jackson that she wrote for the St. Charles Luanga School and poetry written by students attending a summer program at that same school. Also, the Prologue Alternate High School materials include student evaluations of the students Jackson instructed, as well as several pieces of poetry that the students wrote in the class as well as the class play. The school visits folder, spanning the years 1982-1999, includes newspaper clippings on visits from Angela Jackson, poetry children wrote in relation to those visits and thank-you letters to Jackson from the children at the school visits. Finally, the section includes folders of material Jackson used while teaching literature and writing courses between the dates 1986 to 2012. These folders contain syllabi, quizzes, discussion questions, copies of the poetry/literature that was taught and notes.

The Speaking Engagements section spans from the 1970s to the 2010s and largely contains brochures, posters and newsletters of events where Angela Jackson was a guest. Some of the events include visits to writing organizations such as the Poetry Society of America, Young Chicago Poets, ETA Creative Arts Foundation Inc.; events held by literature organizations such as the Gwendolyn Brooks Writers' Conference on Black Literature and Creative Writing, Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature, Decatur Young Authors Conference; and events held in universities such as the Northwestern University Black Alumni Association, the Northwestern Summer Writers' Conference, and the Lewis University Commencement. Jackson's participation in the HistoryMakers oral history archive and a "Visualizing Blackness" symposium are also included. The HistoryMakers folder features a story that Jackson wrote for an event, as well as material concerning a video oral history interview that had been incorporated into the HistoryMakers Collection. The "Visualizing Blackness" folder largely includes information about the symposium, including pamphlets and biographies of participants.

The Subject Files, section spans between 1967 and 2011, and is arranged alphabetically by type of document, into correspondences, notes, poetry, newspaper clippings and others. The section covers materials collected in the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC). It includes magazine clippings and newspaper articles related to and collected by the organization, as well as correspondences within the organization, with a separate folder for correspondence with the Council on Leaders and Specialists (CLS) and International Visitor's Center. It also contains several issues of magazines and journals related to that organization, namely Cumbaya, Nommo and Third World Press, as well as several poems and prose written by members of the organization, including Jackson. It also includes a folder containing handwritten notes on OBAC meetings from 1970 to 1975, as well as some drafts of poetry and prose written by OBAC members with revision notes included in them. Other folders in this collection include news clippings and material on FESTAC, especially on the 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture. This includes correspondence regarding the festival, as well as notes on prose, poetry, and essays. It also includes material on the festival, as well as material on Lagos, Nigeria, where the festival took place.

The General section contains subject files and magazines. The subject files include photographs and several folders on screenwriting. In particular, the TV/Screenwriting and Marketing folder contains a packet on Bob Aller's Screenwriter's Workshop held at Northwestern University, July 21-22, 1984, that discusses how to write effective screenplays for film and television. The magazines folders include issues of First World from 1977-1980, along with a few others.

The Journals/Publication section contains several journals, anthologies and poetry collection in which Jackson's work was published, or with which she was otherwise involved, along with a few textbooks on writing. Of note is The Tender Mending, a romance novel written under the pseudonym, Lia Sanders, in collaboration with Sandra Jackson-Opoku. The collection includes translations of this story into Spanish and Dutch, among other languages. The section also includes an uncorrected page proof of A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun: the Life and Legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks. The copies of the book Some of My Best Friends, as well as Poetry from the Masters Black Arts Movement, contain a letter to Angela Jackson inside the front cover from the editor(s).