In 1931 Baltimorean Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson (1889-1975) joins forces with her daughter Juanita Jackson Mitchell (1913-1992) and begins the “Buy Where You Work” campaign. It soon becomes the model for civil rights protests and is copied nationwide. In 1935 Mrs. Jackson creates the Baltimore branch of the NAACP which she makes into the largest, best organized and most effective branch in the country.
A year earlier she hires lawyer Thurgood Marshall who successfully sues to integrate the University of Maryland Law School. That case begins a series of suits to integrate public schools that culminates in the Brown vs Board of Education decision in 1954.
Lillie Carroll Jackson leads the Baltimore NAACP for the next 35 years and is a formidable pioneer far beyond her home town. Maryland Gov. Theodore McKeldin notes that “I’d rather have the devil after me than Mrs. Jackson. Give her what she wants.”
The Jackson family and the Mitchell branch of the family, through Lillie’s daughter Juanita, have been influential civil rights leaders for three generations.
