WASHINGTON – One might plausibly argue that Dr. Maurice Jackson, a Georgetown University history professor and longtime Washington, D.C., resident, has been destined to write a detailed history on African-Americans in the nation’s capital.
It turns out the former community activist and organizer who toiled for more than a decade in the city’s Black low-income and working class neighborhoods before becoming a professor has been diligently at work on “Halfway to Freedom: A History of the African-American Peoples in Washington, D.C.,” a book Jackson expects will fill a major void in scholarship on D.C. history.
What’s been less predictable for Jackson is that his visibility as a local scholar speaking publicly and writing about African-Americans in Washington has led to an unexpected opportunity. In July, Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent Gray appointed Jackson to chair the city’s first-ever District of Columbia Commission on African American Affairs.
The 16-member commission was formally established last month as a volunteer advisory group to advise the mayor, city council and the public about the economic, educational and health needs of African-American communities. City leaders’ concern over the decline of D.C.’s Black population led the city council and the mayor to approve legislation in 2011 and 2012 for establishing the commission.
With Washington having been a majority Black city for many years, the idea for the commission took off following the 2010 U.S. Census, which showed the Black population declining by 39,000 to 50.7 percent of the city, according to Jackson. In 2011, D.C.’s Black population fell under 50 percent for the first time after more than five decades, according to an estimate by Brookings Institution senior demographer William Frey.
In 2012, however, the U.S. Census reported that Blacks made up 50.1 percent of the city’s 632,323 residents.
