Topic: Maynard Jackson

Maynard Holbrook Jackson, Jr. (March 23, 1938 – June 23, 2003) was an American politician, a member of the Democratic Party, and the first African American mayor of Atlanta, Georgia. He served three terms, two consecutive terms from 1974 until 1982 and a third term from 1990 to 1994. He became the first African-American mayor of Atlanta in the same week that Coleman Young became the first African-American mayor of Detroit.

Jackson's grandfather was the civil rights leader John Wesley Dobbs. His mother, Irene Dobbs Jackson, was a Professor of French at Spelman College in Atlanta. Jackson himself graduated from Morehouse College in 1956 when he was only eighteen years old, where he sang in the Morehouse College Glee Club. After attending the Boston University Law School for a short time, he held several jobs, including selling encyclopedias, before he decided to attend the North Carolina Central University Law School, from which he graduated in 1964. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity that was established for Black Americans.

Jackson married his first wife, Burnella "Bunnie" Burke, in 1965. This couple had three children, Elizabeth, Brooke, and Maynard III, before divorcing. He married Valerie Richardson in 1980, with whom he fathered two more children, Valerie and Alexandra. Valerie Jackson hosts "Between the Lines" each weekend on the WABE-FM radio stadion, the Atlanta Public Broadcasting station.