This month, Hearst Television is celebrating Black history by having courageous conversations. The fight for civil rights and justice goes back generations and has looked different each decade. We’re speaking with community leaders, elders – those who have lived through victories and troubled times, to talk about their experiences, and compare them with what we still struggle with today.Decades of service to her community have driven former Savannah, Georgia, Mayor Edna Jackson from a young age. “I’ve been involved since I was 9 years old because I met (civil rights leader) Westley Wallace Law and he was the one who would always tell us, ‘If you don’t know your history, then you don’t know where you come from.’ And I joined the NAACP youth council.”Jackson would spend years participating in sit-ins, marches and other protests across the South.“We would sit in. They wouldn’t serve us,” she said. “People would yell, throw coffee and just intimidate them.”While she fought for her freedom, her passion was to open doors for leaders who stood for equality.Early on, Jackson said she didn’t initially want to become a community leader.“I didn’t. I didn’t want to do that. Floyd Adams was getting ready to run for Mayor. He said, ‘Edna, it’s your time. I want you to run at large.”That life of public service led her, in 2012, to become Savannah’s first female Black leader. She would then govern over the same land she said denied her basic rights and services. “I continued that goal through the (special-purpose local-option sales tax) agreements that we had in the county. It was very important under my administration that we build a cultural arts center,” she said.Now that she’s no longer in office, Jackson said she spends her time mentoring current political leaders.That includes her longtime friend Van Johnson, the current Savannah mayor.When Johnson was faced with protests for racial equality in 2020, Jackson said she gave him this advice: “I said, ‘The one thing I want you to remember is that you have to go among the people. That’s what we did when they protested here.’ I don’t think that there’s anybody that could’ve handled what he had done.” What does Jackson want people to think about her when they hear her name?“The job that I’ve done. People call me ‘Mayor Jackson.’ I say, ‘Call me Edna because Edna is mine. Mayor is what I got elected to be.’ I like to be called the former, but it’s just a title,” she said. “I have to make sure that if I’m going to carry this title that I’m still carrying myself, in a way, that people will give me the respect that they have given me before. I don’t want to have to tell you that you have to respect me. No. It’s how you perceive me and how you want to call me. I don’t ask for it. I’m plain old ‘Edna Branch Jackson.’ That’s my name. And that’s the name I carry everywhere I go.”
This month, Hearst Television is celebrating Black history by having courageous conversations. The fight for civil rights and justice goes back generations and has looked different each decade. We’re speaking with community leaders, elders – those who have lived through victories and troubled times, to talk about their experiences, and compare them with what we still struggle with today.
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Decades of service to her community have driven former Savannah, Georgia, Mayor Edna Jackson from a young age.
“I’ve been involved since I was 9 years old because I met (civil rights leader) Westley Wallace Law and he was the one who would always tell us, ‘If you don’t know your history, then you don’t know where you come from.’ And I joined the NAACP youth council.”
Jackson would spend years participating in sit-ins, marches and other protests across the South.
“We would sit in. They wouldn’t serve us,” she said. “People would yell, throw coffee and just intimidate them.”
While she fought for her freedom, her passion was to open doors for leaders who stood for equality.
Early on, Jackson said she didn’t initially want to become a community leader.
“I didn’t. I didn’t want to do that. Floyd Adams was getting ready to run for Mayor. He said, ‘Edna, it’s your time. I want you to run at large.”
That life of public service led her, in 2012, to become Savannah’s first female Black leader. She would then govern over the same land she said denied her basic rights and services.
“I continued that goal through the (special-purpose local-option sales tax) agreements that we had in the county. It was very important under my administration that we build a cultural arts center,” she said.
Now that she’s no longer in office, Jackson said she spends her time mentoring current political leaders.
That includes her longtime friend Van Johnson, the current Savannah mayor.
When Johnson was faced with protests for racial equality in 2020, Jackson said she gave him this advice: “I said, ‘The one thing I want you to remember is that you have to go among the people. That’s what we did when they protested here.’ I don’t think that there’s anybody that could’ve handled what he had done.”
What does Jackson want people to think about her when they hear her name?
“The job that I’ve done. People call me ‘Mayor Jackson.’ I say, ‘Call me Edna because Edna is mine. Mayor is what I got elected to be.’ I like to be called the former, but it’s just a title,” she said. “I have to make sure that if I’m going to carry this title that I’m still carrying myself, in a way, that people will give me the respect that they have given me before. I don’t want to have to tell you that you have to respect me. No. It’s how you perceive me and how you want to call me. I don’t ask for it. I’m plain old ‘Edna Branch Jackson.’ That’s my name. And that’s the name I carry everywhere I go.”
