Maynard Jackson

Maynard Holbrook Jackson, Jr. (March 23, 1938 – June 23, 2003) was an American politician, a member of the Democratic Party, and the first African American mayor of Atlanta, Georgia. He served three terms, two consecutive terms from 1974 until 1982 and a third term from 1990 to 1994. He became the first African-American mayor of Atlanta in the same week that Coleman Young became the first African-American mayor of Detroit. Jackson's grandfather was the civil rights leader John Wesley Dobbs. His mother, Irene Dobbs Jackson, was a Professor of French at Spelman College in Atlanta. Jackson himself graduated from Morehouse College in 1956 when he was only eighteen years old, where he sang in the Morehouse College Glee Club. After attending...