Lillie May Carroll Jackson (May 25, 1889 – July 5, 1975), pioneer civil rights activist, organizer of the Baltimore branch of the NAACP.

On an occasion when the church was used to show religious motion pictures, she met Methodist evangelist Keiffer Albert Jackson of Carrollton, Mississippi.

[1] Upon the arrival of their first child, the Jackson family settled in Baltimore, where Lillie began to invest in real estate.

[2] Some report that she became focused on civil rights activism after her daughters were denied entrance to the universities of their choice due to racial discrimination and segregation in Maryland.

[2] She sponsored the City-Wide Young Peoples forum, supporting her daughter Juanita's leadership of the group in the early 1930s.

[5] At one City-Wide Young Peoples Forum gathering, Charles Hamilton Houston, informed the audience "we could sue Jim Crow out of Maryland".

[7] Jackson was a mentor to civil rights lawyers like Charles Houston and Thurgood Marshall, and raised funds to support their cases.

[4] Jackson was fundamental to Baltimore being the first Southern city to integrate its schools after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.

[10] In 1935, Marshall won a landmark case financed by the Baltimore NAACP,[11] Murray v. Pearson, removing the color barrier from admissions to the University of Maryland School of Law.

[10] In 1938 the branch's lawyers won a historic legal challenge to racial barriers in publicly funded institutions.

[citation needed] Jackson drove the Baltimore NAACP to extend the fight for equal teacher pay across Maryland.

[4][10] The Baltimore branch's legal fights also led to the first time that black policemen could wear uniforms, rather than remaining in their own clothes while on duty.

After the 1933 Eastern Shore lynching of George Armwood, she organized a series of protests with Afro-American Editor Carl Murphy that built public outrage and energy for her future movements.

[4][7] Ultimately, her efforts built the Baltimore NAACP into the largest branch of the organization in the United States with a peak membership of 17,600.

[6] In the 1960s, Jackson's organizing power helped secure the passage of federal civil rights laws multiple times, in 1964, 1965, and 1966.

[citation needed] Jackson's will called for the home she lived in for twenty-two years, 1320 Eutaw Place in Baltimore, to be turned into a museum.

The facility then became dormant, awaiting sufficient matching funds to put in use a grant which was received from the state of Maryland.