When John W. Jackson (BBA ’76) delivers the keynote address at Terry Convocation on May 10, he will, in some ways, see a much different university than the one he attended nearly 50 years ago.
As one of the first 10 African Americans to play football for UGA, Jackson walked on as a free safety in 1972, a year after the team was desegregated. When he graduated four years later, he was one of about 600 African American students who earned UGA degrees between 1972-76.
But in other ways, UGA is not much different at all.
“I had an incredible learning experience,” he said. “There were so many acts of kindness from professors. . . . The environment at Georgia was very encouraging to me. More people wanted me to succeed than fail. The problems I had at Georgia were so insignificant I discarded them. It prepared me for life after college — the barriers you had to overcome, that you had to be prepared. I left Georgia ready to compete in the corporate world.”
Jackson has spent more than three decades working in the banking business. He started his career at BankSouth, where he remained for 15 years. He moved to SouthTrust in 1991, where he managed an $800 million loan portfolio as the head of metropolitan banking. In 2004, Jackson co-founded Bank of Atlanta and served as its president and CEO, building the bank into a profitable $230 million operation.
The bank was acquired by the $3 billion State Bank and Trust in 2014. He now serves as executive vice president and market president of Cadence Bank.
A member of the Terry Dean’s Advisory Council, Jackson started the Emerson W. Jackson Scholarship Foundation to honor his father. He’s given out 10 or 11 small grants to students that embrace some of his father’s core values of respect, integrity and kindness.
When he received the offer to be Convocation speaker, the timing was right.
“Sometimes you wonder if you’ve made a difference,” he said. “My name is not widely known outside the banking arena. But it reenergized me, reaffirmed that what I was doing was right, that I was making difference.”
He’s had a profound effect on his daughter, Jenna Jackson, who graduates with a Master of Public Administration and Policy the same day as her father’s speech. She is a Double Dawg — she earned her JD degree in 2014.
“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for people like my dad,” Jenna Jackson said. “It’s an honor to be graduating the same day he speaks. To hear him, to see him. I understand the sacrifice he made for his family.”
He was the youngest of eight children and his father, who had a sixth-grade education, worked in the mailroom of a prominent Atlanta law firm staffed by many UGA-educated attorneys. His father saw the value of an education and encouraged his children to attend college.
“When you’re growing up, parents want you to be the very best that you can. They want you to be far better than them,” he said. “The best way to do that was to become educated.”
Two of his older brothers attended Morris Brown College, but Jackson was the first to attend the University of Georgia. After Jackson’s first year, his father encouraged him give up football to focus on his education. He even received a scholarship from his father’s law firm.
He worked his way through school, waking up at 4 a.m. to staff the morning shift at McDonald’s. He would leave work and go to his 8 a.m. business policy class with William Tate, now namesake of UGA’s Tate Student Center. Tate was a notoriously tough professor who took an interest in Jackson. He remembers Tate asking him, “Have you thought about going to banking? I would give you a recommendation.”
Jenna Jackson, who was named Miss UGA in 2013 and Miss Georgia in 2015, said her father has been a constant source of support. As just the third black Miss UGA, she said there was some pressure with the role, a pressure her father understands.
“He was very quietly in the background,” she said. “He had been through it. He was under immense pressure. You have to be twice as good to go half as far — he taught me that so subtly that it wasn’t a burden.”