House That Jack Built My Life Story As a Trailblazer in Broadcasting and Entertainment

9780060198473

0060198478

Chapter OneCharleston to WashingtonAs was the case with many Blacks of my generation born in the South, my birth was not officially recorded. I was born at home, not in a hospital, and the church my family attended did not keep birth records in any organized fashion. This circumstance later caused me considerable frustration when I tried to get a passport and other official documents requiring proof of birth. But as narrowly as I can pinpoint it, I was born on November 3, 1915, in Charleston, South Carolina. I was the fifth child, and third son, of Eugene Baron Jackson and Laura Rivers Jackson. My given name was Harold Baron Jackson, but I was never called Harold. My childhood nickname was Peaches, or Peachy, because when I was a baby I didn't like peaches. Later on, when I decided that nickname was too babyish, I started calling myself Hal.My father, Eugene, was a fair-skinned man with straight hair, born of a well-respected Charleston family. His mother, Estelle Baron Jackson, was aslender, very fair mulatto woman who could have passed for White. Neither she nor my father ever made mention of my grandfather. I don't even know his name. All I ever knew of him was that he was a well-to-do White gentleman and that my grandmother bore him three sons and a daughter throughout the course of their relationship. My mother was dark-complected, and I have been told that she was born to the Reverend and Mrs. James Rivers on James Island, one of the Sea Isla