Jackson was born in Mobile, Alabama, as the only child of John W. and Juanita Richardson Sherrod.
[4] In February 1964, Martin Luther King Jr., Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff, and members of Congress met for strategy sessions to plan the Selma to Montgomery marches in Jackson's Selma, Alabama home.
[5][8] It was also in Jackson's home that Martin Luther King Jr. watched Lyndon Johnson give his Voting Rights Act Address on March 15, 1965.
[3][9] Jackson wrote a memoir, The House by the Side of the Road: The Selma Civil Rights Movement, which was published in 2011 by The University of Alabama Press.
[5] Also in 2014, Niecy Nash played Jackson in the historical drama film Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay.