Esther Merle Jackson

{{Short description|American theatrical historian and director (1922–2006)}}

{{Infobox academic

| birth_date = {{birth date|1922|9|3}}

| birth_place = Pine Bluff, Arkansas, U.S.

| death_date = {{death date and age|2006|8|1|1922|9|3}}

| death_place = New York City, U.S.

| occupation = {{flatlist|

Theater historian
Stage director

}}

| alma_mater = {{Indented plainlist|

}}

| thesis_title = The Emergence of a Characteristic Contemporary Form in the American Drama of Tennessee Williams

| thesis_url = https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/ws/send_file/send?accession=osu1486562415805887&disposition=inline

| thesis_year = 1958

| doctoral_advisor = Everett M. Schreck

| discipline = Theater history

| sub_discipline = Tennessee Williams

| workplaces = {{Indented plainlist|

}}

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.{{Cite news |date=September 21, 2006 |title=Esther Merle Jackson (1923-2006) |url=https://www.jbhe.com/latest/index092106.html |access-date=February 22, 2024 |work=JBHE Weekly Bulleton}} 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.Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 [database on-line]. Provo, Utah, US: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.{{Cite news |last=Dandridge |first=Mary |date=October 1, 1938 |title='Round And 'Bout Eldorado, Ark. |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/40092528/ |access-date=February 24, 2024 |work=New Pittsburgh Courier |pages=22 |via=Newspapers.com}} 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.{{Cite web |date=February 2, 2009 |title=MEMORIAL RESOLUTION OF THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ON THE DEATH OF PROFESSOR EMERITA ESTHER M. JACKSON (1922–2006) |url=https://kb.wisc.edu/images/group222/shared/2009-02-02FacultySenate/2091(mem_res).pdf |access-date=February 22, 2024 |website=University of Wisconsin}}

After teaching at Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical & Normal College as an instructor in English and Speech (1942–1944), Jackson taught at Hampton Institute (1946–1949) and Clark College (1949–1956) as Assistant Professor of Drama, simultaneously serving as theater director. She received a John Hay Whitney Foundation fellowship in 1956 and an Ohio State University Fellowship in 1957, and she returned to Ohio State to get her PhD in Theatre in 1958, one of the first Black women in the United States to do so; her dissertation, supervised by Everett M. Schreck, was titled The Emergence of a Characteristic Contemporary Form in the American Drama of Tennessee Williams.{{Cite thesis |last=Jackson |first=Esther Merle |title=The Emergence of a Characteristic Contemporary Form in the American Drama of Tennessee Williams |date=1958 |access-date=February 22, 2024 |degree=PhD |publisher=Ohio State University |url=https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/ws/send_file/send?accession=osu1486562415805887&disposition=inline}}

Jackson started working in post-secondary education theatrical productions after getting her PhD, and she spent a year working as a Professor of English at North Carolina A&T State University (1958–1959) and as Visiting Professor of Humanities at the Tuskegee Institute (1959–1960). She was a Fulbright Scholar in Drama and Theater Arts at Victoria and Albert Museum during the 1960–1961 academic year.{{Cite web |title=Esther Jackson |url=https://fulbrightscholars.org/grantee/esther-jackson-0 |access-date=February 24, 2024 |website=Fulbright Scholar Program}}

In 1961, Jackson returned to Clark College as Professor of Speech and Drama and as a chair of their Department of Speech and Drama. From 1964 to 1965, she worked as a specialist in theatre and dance education at the United States Office of Education, where she intended to expand theater's role in the Great Society. After working as Joseph Papp's assistant in 1963, she started working in 1965 as Director of Education at the New York Shakespeare Festival. She later spent short periods teaching at Adelphi University, Shaw University, and the Free University of Berlin, the latter where she was a Fulbright Scholar in Drama and Theater Arts during the 1967–1968 academic year.{{Cite web |title=Esther Jackson |url=https://fulbrightscholars.org/grantee/esther-jackson |access-date=February 22, 2024 |website=Fulbright Scholar Program }} She published the book The Broken World of Tennessee Williams in 1965. She was elected a Guggenheim Fellow in 1968,{{Cite web |title=Esther Merle Jackson |url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/esther-merle-jackson/ |access-date=February 22, 2024 |website=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation |language=en}} for "a study of the drama of ideas in the American theatre, 1909–1966".{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ej88AQAAIAAJ |title=Reports of the President and the Treasurer |publisher=John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation |year=1965 |page=203}}

In 1969, she became professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Theatre and Drama, remaining there until 1987. While at UW Madison, she worked with John Ezell during her efforts to start an institution on American theatre studies and while teaching drama. On August 30, 1978, one of their co-productions, the duo's half-hour compilation of plays from Thornton Wilder titled Wilder Wilder, aired nationwide on PBS.{{Cite news |date=August 30, 1978 |title=Midwest in the spotlight on PBS |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/288325599/ |access-date=February 24, 2024 |work=The Post-Crescent |via=Newspapers.com }}

As an academic, Jackson specialized in theatrical literature, especially the works of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill. The Reporter described her as a "foremost critic of playwright Tennessee Williams" and a "leading black educator in theater history and criticism".{{Cite news |date=January 13, 1970 |title=Dr. Jackson Joins Faculty At Madison |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-reporter/17352072/ |access-date=February 24, 2024 |work=The Reporter |pages=15 |via=Newspapers.com }} 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."

Having suffered from Alzheimer's disease, Jackson died of complications from the disease on August 1, 2006, in Brooklyn, aged 83.

In 2011, her papers were transferred to the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library; by the time theater professor Daniel Ciba discovered them in 2019 while working on a research project on Jackson, the resulting collection remained unorganized.{{Cite web |last=Ciba |first=Daniel |date=February 10, 2020 |title=Following the Fellows: Daniel Ciba on Esther Merle Jackson |url=https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/marbl/2020/02/10/following-the-fellows-daniel-ciba-on-esther-merle-jackson/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230921093850/https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/marbl/2020/02/10/following-the-fellows-daniel-ciba-on-esther-merle-jackson/ |archive-date=September 21, 2023 |access-date=February 24, 2024 |website=Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library}}