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• 1 media/image67.jpg 2021-08-26T12:27:25-07:00 1969 - Blyden Jackson (1910-2000) Joins the Faculty 3 Blyden Jackson, begins teaching in the English department. Professor Jackson was the first tenured Black faculty member at UNC, and developed and taught the first courses in African American literature at UNC. Additionally, he chaired the advisory committee overseeing the curricula that eventually became the Department of Afro and African American Studies. He also served as Associate Dean of the Graduate School from 1973 to 1981, helping to recruit and retain Black graduate students and faculty members. plain 2021-09-02T08:10:39-07:00 06/01/1969 Blyden Jackson, formerly of Fisk University, begins teaching in the English department. The first tenured Black faculty member at UNC, he developed a range of courses in African American and southern literature. His courses on African American literature were the first at UNC. He also served as associate dean of the Graduate School from 1973 to 1981, helping to recruit and retain Black graduate students and faculty members. A pioneer in Black literature studies, Jackson published scholarship on the Harlem Renaissance, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Ralph Ellison. He chaired the advisory committee overseeing the curricula that eventually became the Department of Afro and African American Studies and completed in retirement the first of a planned four-volume history of African American literature. The UNC admissions building is named for Blyden and his spouse Roberta Jackson (1920-1999), the first Black female faculty member of UNC’s School of Education. 
  
  
  
  
  SOURCES
  
  Banks, Lindsey.  “UNC’s first Black tenured professors left behind an impactful legacy.”  The Daily Tar Heel, 7 Feb. 2019, https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2019/02/first-Black-tenured-faculty-members-at-carolina-0208.
  
  “Jackson, Blyden.”  Civil Rights Digital Library.  Digital Library of Georgia, 2020,http://crdl.usg.edu/people/j/jackson_blyden/?Welcome&Welcome.
  
  “Jackson, Blyden.”  Notable Kentucky African Americans Database.  Reinette Jones & University of Kentucky Libraries, http://nkaa.uky.edu/nkaa/items/show/114.
  
  University Communications.  “225 years of Tar Heel: Blyden and Roberta Jackson” in “Academics.”  The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Feb. 4, 2019, https://www.unc.edu/posts/2019/02/04/225-years-of-tar-heels-blyden-and-roberta-jackson/.
  
  Wallsten, Peter.  “Building to be named for pioneers of faculty integration.”  The Daily Tar Heel June 25, 1992: 1A, 5A. Rpt. in North Carolina Newspapers, http://newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073228/1992-06-25/ed-1/seq-1/.