Fay M. Jackson (1902-1979)

By Dannie Gore, Sr.

Fay M. Jackson was a pioneering African American journalist, publisher, publicist, and newspaper correspondent. At sixteen she left Dallas for Los Angeles where she attended L. A. Polytechnic High School. In 1922, she entered the University of Southern California where she majored in journalism and philosophy.

During the late twenties, she founded and co-edited Flash, a Los Angeles based Black magazine, and was in close correspondence with Arna Bontemps and Wallace Thurman, two writers who had left the West Coast for Harlem. In the mid-thirties Jackson became the first Hollywood correspondent for the Associated Negro Press (ANP).

It was for the ANP that she covered the coronation of King George VI of England in 1937. While in Europe she interviewed H. G. Wells, Haile Selassie, Paul Robeson, Josephine Baker, and other extraordinary personalities.

Her interest in writing and publishing continued throughout her life although she later earned her livelihood as a real estate broker and notary public. – Phyllis Rauch Klotman