Algernon B. Jackson

Algernon Brashear Jackson (1878–1942) was a prominent African American physician, surgeon, writer, and columnist who contributed profoundly to the National Negro Health Movement, an organization which sought to uplift African Americans by educating them on preventative medicine and public health. He was also well known for being a founding member of the Sigma Pi Phi fraternity and pioneering an effective treatment for rheumatism.

Personal life

Jackson was born in Princeton, Indiana, on May 21, 1878, to Charles A. Jackson and Sarah L. (née Brashear) Jackson. His mother was a public school teacher in the area and received an extensive education at several institutions, including Indiana University, University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and Drexel Institute. He married Elizabeth A. Newman on June 20, 1920, in Media, Pennsylvania. He died on October 22, 1942, in his home in Washington, D.C., at age 64.

Career

Jackson attended Indiana University for his undergraduate education and then continued on to Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, where, in 1901, he became the first African American to earn his Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree from that institution He completed additional post-graduate work at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. He then became an assistant surgeon at Philadelphia Polyclinic Hospital—an institution run exclusively by white physicians. He was the first and only black surgeon to work at the hospital at that time and kept the position for thirteen years. and Henry McKee Minton (a well-established doctor of a notoriously wealthy African American family), among others.

In 1907, Jackson cofounded the Mercy Hospital School for Nurses and undertook the position of Surgeon-in-Chief, which he maintained for 15 years before becoming the hospital's Superintendent. He continued in this position for 9 more years until 1921, at which point he left to accept a job at Howard University. He was succeeded as Superintendent by friend and fellow co-founder of Sigma Pi Phi, Henry McKee Minton. From 1921 to 1934 he was a professor of bacteriology and public health, from 1921 to 1925 he was the director of the School of Public Health, and from 1926 to 1928 he was physician in charge at Howard University. In 1904, Jackson, Henry McKee Minton, and two other fellow African American medical professionals became the founding members of Sigma Pi Phi, the first black Greek Letter organization, with the goal of uniting other like-minded black professionals in the North. He authored three books: Evolution and Life: A Series of Lay Sermons, The Man Next Door, and Jim and Mr. Eddy: A Dixie Motorlogue.

Public health involvement

Jackson was heavily involved with the National Negro Health movement during his years as director of the School of Public Health at Howard University until his death in 1942. The movement itself was established in 1915 by Booker T. Washington, who was impressed by the Negro Organization Society of Virginia's implementation of a "clean-up week" in 1913, and sought to bring similar ideals of sanitation and hygiene to a wider national African American audience with National Negro Health Week. Jackson championed this idea, acting as a director of the movement for much of his later life, most likely beginning in the 1920s and continuing into the early 1930s.

Although primarily based out of Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., Jackson made several tours through the South, speaking at African American public schools and community youth centers on matters of hygiene and disease prevention and visiting hospitals to determine the state of Negro health care throughout the country. His findings from the latter tours were published in several journals and included calls to action for the government and the public to improve clinical facilities for Southern African Americans by allocating more money, better equipment, more qualified staff, and—most importantly—preventative educational components. As such, he called upon the educated black masses—much like he did with the black medical community—to reach the "poor unfortunate neglected members of our race" and teach them "that better living means better health, longer life, a finer happiness and a greater power for doing the things which we all as a race want to do...[to] make us unafraid and unconquerable." He additionally implied that determining racial makeup through objective measures could potentially prove "more unpopular with whites than with Negroes," either because it will reveal less pure bloodlines in whites, or chemical superiority in blacks. But even more so, it was the fault of "the social and economic maladjustment born of a slimy race prejudice indigenous to America" that prevented "all citizens, black and white, [from facing] life and death on equal terms."