Vera Jackson


Vera Jackson was a "pioneer woman photographer in the black press".
She photographed African-American social life and celebrity culture in 1930s and 1940s Los Angeles. Noted photographic subjects included major league baseball player Jackie Robinson, educator Mary McLeod Bethune, and actresses Dorothy Dandridge, Hattie McDaniel and Lena Horne.

Biography

Vera Jackson was born Otis Theda Ruth in Wichita, Kansas on July 21, 1911, and was raised in Corona, California. She graduated from Corona High School in 1930, and married Vernon Jackson in 1931.
Jackson was a freelance photographer with the California Eagle. Editor Charlotta Bass later hired her as a staff photographer and often paired her to work with society editor Jessie Mae Brown until Brown left for the Los Angeles Sentinel.
When Jackson left the California Eagle, she earned her B.A. in 1952 from Los Angeles State College and her Master’s degree in 1954 from the University of Southern California in education. She became a Los Angeles Unified School District teacher and retired in 1976 after 25 years of teaching.
During her teaching career, Jackson continued with freelance photography. Her work has been exhibited at the UCLA Gallery, the Riverside Art Museum, the Black Gallery of Los Angeles, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, as well as the Los Angeles Country Public Library, the Afro-American Museum of History and Culture in Los Angeles and the Museum of Art in San Francisco.
Jackson died on January 25, 1999 at the age of 88.

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