He was the ninth of 12 children born to Edward and Delilah Jackson, both enslaved until freed by the American Civil War, and believed strongly in racial self help as advocated by Booker T. Washington.
In 1928, as he began his part-time studies at the University of Chicago for a PhD degree, Jackson became a professor of history at the college, and would serve two decades as chairperson of its social sciences department, until his death.
Jackson also wrote a weekly newspaper column between 1942 and 1948 for the Norfolk Journal and Guide entitled "Rights and Duties in a Democracy".
During the 1940s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) would distribute his annual voting report widely, sending between 10,000 and 12,000 copies to daily newspapers, libraries, teachers, reform organizations, as well as state and federal officials.
He also worked with attorneys Thurgood Marshall and Oliver Hill to equalize salaries of black and white teachers, which in 1940 succeeded before the U.S.
Fifty signed the resulting document, which became known as the "Durham Manifesto," which called for improvement within the existing system, as well as condemned the practice of racial segregation.
[12] However, many white moderates thought opposing all Jim Crow laws went too far and also regretted not having been invited to the Durham conference, so the two groups met in Richmond in 1943 and in 1944 formed the Southern Regional Council.
In November 1948, Jackson organized a conference at Thomas Jefferson's historic Monticello Plantation that produced a document signed by 50 leading activists calling for "freedom from any discrimination bounded by law.
and initially a piano teacher at the institute, and later the organist for Gillfield Baptist Church as well as a music professor at Virginia State.
His papers and some effects are held by the special collections library of Virginia State University[14] His son Luther Porter Jackson Jr. worked at the Newark Evening News and The Washington Post.
A decade later it built an addition to serve African American students from Prince Edward County, Virginia, where the schools were closed between 1959 and 1964 to avoid court orders requiring integration.