Shelby M. Jackson

Who was Shelby M. Jackson?

Shelby M. Jackson was a Democrat who served from 1948 to 1964 as the superintendent of public education in Louisiana. In the early 1960s, Jackson tried in vain to block federally authorized school desegregation. Jackson was posthumously honored in 1994, by the naming of the "Shelby M. Jackson Memorial Campus" of Louisiana Technical College in Ferriday.

A former educator originally from Monterey in Concordia Parish, Jackson was elected four times as his state's school superintendent. In his first election in 1948 he ran on the unsuccessful Sam Houston Jones gubernatorial slate. In his last reelection on April 17, 1960, he overwhelmed the first Republican ever to seek the Louisiana superintendency, Donald Emerich, a professor at Centenary College in Shreveport. Jackson polled 86.7 percent of the two-party vote, to Emerich's 13.3 percent. Jackson became well-known politically through his tenure as superintendent. For sixteen years, nearly every child's report card in the state bore Jackson's stenciled signature.

Jackson, as superintendent, advocated increased state spending on education, but not federal financing.