Esther Merle Jackson

Esther Merle Jackson (September 3, 1922 – August 1, 2006) was an American theatrical historian and director. Born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, she originally taught at historically black colleges and universities and was one of the first Black women in the United States to get a PhD in Theatre and worked as Director of Education at the New York Shakespeare Festival, before becoming a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Theatre and Drama. She was an expert in the works of Tennessee Williams, writing the book The Broken World of Tennessee Williams in 1965, and she and John Ezell collaborated on several theatrical productions, including a half-hour compilation of plays from Thornton Wilder broadcast on PBS in 1978. Biography Esther Merle Jackson was born on September 3, 1922, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Her father Napoleon F. Jackson was principal of Booker T. Washington High School, a segregated school in El Dorado, Arkansas, and her mother Ruth (née Atkinson) Jackson taught English at the aforementioned school. After studying at segregated schools in El Dorado, Arkansas, she studied at Hampton Institute, where she got her BS in 1942, and at Ohio State University, where she got her MA in Theatre in 1946.

Jackson started working in post-secondary education theatrical productions after getting her PhD,

In 1961, Jackson returned to Clark College as Professor of Speech and Drama and as a chair of their Department of Speech and Drama. She published the book The Broken World of Tennessee Williams in 1965. for "a study of the drama of ideas in the American theatre, 1909–1966".

In 1969, she became professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Theatre and Drama, remaining there until 1987.

As an academic, Jackson specialized in theatrical literature, especially the works of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill. In 1981, she self-published The American Drama and the New World Vision, a manuscript on theater history which, according to Daniel Ciba, "serves as the culmination of Jackson's scholarship [and] connects her scholarship as a through-line that she developed directly through her many years of teaching."