James Warren Jackson and An Earlier Atlanta Black Gay Life
The Atlanta Committee, The Rose Room & Morehouse College (Before Loretta’s) This is the third article from “Reclaiming Our Time: A History of Atlanta’s Black LGBTQIA Life,” a series of editorials that presents vivid and personal accounts of one of the city’s most definitive communities. James Warren Jackson is a Black gay man born in Atlanta in 1946.
He and his family lived in the Herndon Homes, a housing project built expressly for Black tenants in 1941. His dad worked as a janitor at Atlanta Public Schools, while his mom worked as a housewife and later became a substitute teacher, also at APS. “It was enough,” Jackson recalled, “because we didn’t know there was anything more.” He remembers his childhood as pleasant and uplifting, with very little exposure to the world beyond Southwest Atlanta.
When he was around 11 years old, he and his mother were riding a local bus and as white passengers boarded, she directed him toward the back of the bus.
Not recognizing what one had to do with the other, he questioned why. His mother gently responded, “You don’t understand now, but you will when you get older.” On his first day of fifth grade, as he headed out for class, his mother advised, “That’s how girls carry their books.” He quickly corrected his stance and lowered the books to his side. “As soon as I got outside,” he recalled with laughter, “I held those books so tight to my chest and kept moving.” Both of the separate worlds he occupied jointly insisted that he perform silence and submission long before he realized he was a natural threat to each one’s order.
