Professor Jenn M. Jackson honors what ‘Black Women Taught Us’ in new book

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Jenn M. Jackson chose one sentence to encapsulate the message of their first book, “Black Women Taught Us: an Intimate History of Black Feminism.”

“It’s actually the one the publisher chose, the very last sentence in the introduction. It’s the one where I say that Black women have taught us how to listen and to work, and now it’s time for us to do both,” Jackson said.

Jackson, an assistant professor in the Political Science department at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, published their book on Jan 23. The book is a “love letter” honoring Black women and feminists whose work has been “erased from the archive.” The book also catalogs Jackson’s journey and creates a “living archive” of Black women’s history, they said.

“People pick it up and think that, because I’m a professor of political science, it’ll be this dry, dull read about history,” Jackson said. “It’s just not. I opened the book talking about my mother and my aunts who I would hang out with on Wednesday nights at choir rehearsal. Those are the first Black women who taught me anything.”

Jackson, who holds a doctoral degree in political science and government from the University of Chicago, is also an affiliate with the Women’s and Gender studies, African American studies and LGBT studies departments at SU. Jackson’s book is based on a course they teach: “Black Feminist (Insurgent) Politics.”

“Black Women Taught Us” features 11 original essays about teachings by Black feminists and women, as well as Jackson’s mother and aunts. Jackson hopes every Black woman who picks up this book — a “self-affirming” resource they longed for growing up — feels loved.

Jackson grew up in Oakland, California, in the 90s as an “awkward, queer, Black girl who was very, very tall at a very young age,” they said. Jackson has been 6-foot-4 since they were 12, which made their relationship with gender and race very complex.

“When you are trying to navigate the world in a gender-expansive, agender, complex body, and you’re also poor, and you’re also Black, and you’re also so many other things … you learn very quickly what is ‘acceptable’ behavior and what is going to be frowned upon,” they said.

Jackson earned a bachelor of science in industrial engineering at the University of Southern California. At the time, USC did not offer a Black feminist politics course, and there were no other resources, mentors or peers to help Jackson learn how to navigate the world as a Black woman.

During their time at USC, Jackson said peers excluded them from group projects and social activities. Their struggles with racism were heightened by the murder of Oscar Grant, who was killed by a police officer at a Bay Area Rapid Transit station about 10 minutes from Jackson’s grandmother’s home, which they used all the time growing up. They said Grant’s murder “really messed” with their head.

“I couldn’t keep compartmentalizing, I couldn’t just go to work and do my work and be a ‘cog in the wheel’ and not acknowledge what was happening in my body because of the way the world was working,” Jackson said.

Jackson started reading books by Black women and discovered Black feminist teachings, through which they eventually came to honor themself. Jackson said they initially felt anger about the lack of information about Black feminism, as well as shame and guilt for their lack of awareness.

These factors encouraged them to pursue a masters in political science at California State University, Fullerton, changing their career path. Jackson, who was pregnant with their second child at the time, was taking night classes and working 60 hours a week. Following Jackson’s graduation from their master’s program, their professors encouraged them to pursue a Ph.D. Jackson, a first-generation college student, was unsure how to navigate their pursuit of a doctoral degree at UChicago, but received guidance from their professors.

This experience encouraged them to write about their experiences navigating life in Orange County and medical racism as a Black woman with a heart condition. Jackson contributed their work to several magazines, as well as Teen Vogue — where they are now a columnist — and The Washington Post. In 2018, an editor, who now works for Penguin Random House LLC., encouraged them to write a book, and presented a book deal two years later.

While studying at UChicago, Jackson met Dr. Elizabeth Jordie Davies, now an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine.

“Jenn is a bright light, fearless, and such a joy to have in my life,” Davies wrote in a statement to The Daily Orange. “(Their book) is a safe haven for folks who need the wisdom and guidance of Black feminism.”

Davies, one of Jackson’s best friends and collaborators, said the two have forthcoming research on “reparations processes at the local level” with David J. Knight, incoming assistant professor of sociology and faculty fellow in African American and African diaspora studies at Columbia University.

Jackson said their book is a culmination of the experiences they’ve had with Black women throughout their life, especially Zora Neale Hurston, whose work was lost and found by Alice Walker.

“The world didn’t think that (Hurston) was valuable or important. She died of malnutrition. She died in an unmarked grave. The result of that is that so many of these Black women’s stories were erased from the archive,” Jackson said. “I had to work really hard to find them.”

Jackson said their book is a “love letter” for several different reasons — one being Jackson wanting to honor Black women like Hurston who, they said, have not been properly honored or recognized.

Jackson wrote their book during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which “disproportionately impacted so many Black people,” they said. Jackson said they watched countless women in their family die, seemingly out of nowhere.

Some women Jackson wrote about in their book died before it was published, they said. Their maternal grandmother died while they were writing the book. Jackson struggled writing the book, and had to “grapple with the fact that this world is so unkind to these women (they) love so much.”

“They don’t have to be ailing. They don’t have to be older. The weight of the world is such that Black women weather from the inside out,” Jackson said. “I don’t think enough people honor that (or) regard the struggle Black women face.”

Jackson said people, themself included, take part in these systems that harm Black women. It is important people take Black women seriously, they said. Jackson, too, struggles with loving Black women — citing how they initially left bell hooks out of the book and will “never feel good about that.”

“I think that all love has to be accountable. It’s a love letter because it is accountable — it’s citation-heavy, the glossary is on point, the bibliography is on point, everything in here is fact-checked, peer-reviewed,” Jackson said.

Jackson began teaching their course “Black Feminist (Insurgent) Politics” in 2019, which is a safe haven and helpful resource for Black women college students that Jackson never had as an undergrad student at USC.

Sonia Issa, an SU senior majoring in political science and project management and minoring in African American studies, took Jackson’s course in spring 2022.

“We got to learn about feminism, womanism — all the ‘-isms’ — as it pertains to being a Black woman in America. It really set the social location of Black women in my brain,” Issa said. “Professor Jackson has a unique way of bringing (centuries’ old course text) into the here-and-now — real-life social problems that we deal with in 2024.”

Jackson said the difference between Black feminism and mainstream white feminism is “everything.” Jackson said first, second and third-wave mainstream white feminism were concerned with women’s self-autonomy, right to work, public life and sexual freedom, which, they noted, are valid struggles. Black feminists, however, were concerned with more fundamental rights, they said.

“Black feminists said, ‘Hey, everybody, hey guess what? Y’all are worried about that, but we’re trying to feed ourselves. We go to work and people pay us less because of the color of our skin,’” Jackson said.

In their book and course, Jackson tells Harriet Jacobs’ story of evading her captors by hiding in an attic for seven years because “in that attic, (Jacobs) says that’s the freest she had ever felt,” they said.

One time in class, Issa said there was no way Jacobs was free in that attic. Jackson explained there is a “freedom from” and a “freedom to.”

“We’re always so focused on this freedom to be myself, freedom to express myself. But we rarely talk about getting free from the institutions that are seeking to annihilate you, or to rename you, or to claim you as a possession,” they said.

Jackson said Black feminism has emerged now as a way to “affirm and signify that we, Black women, in whatever way we show up in our bodies, are human.”

Jackson said people often ask them how they are “still a Black woman” if they use they/them pronouns and identify as genderflux and androgynous. They said they come from an African ancestral tradition where one’s sexuality is not tethered to who one sleeps with, but rather to what they believe and who they advocate for. To Jackson, that is what Black feminism is actually about.

“I believe that Black feminism requires a curiosity and an interrogation of all of these systems and ways of being — of the status quo, of these ideas that ask us to bend and shrink and get into these boxes,” Jackson said. “Black feminism takes us out of those boxes and says we can, actually, be whatever the f*ck we want.”