Social Worker, Community Activist and First Black Mayor of Waco
Mae Johnson was born September 10, 1941 in Teague, Texas to parents Allison and Eula King Johnson. Her parents were teachers in the segregated “Salem” community school in Freestone County. Growing up in Teague, her parents had instilled the important value of an education and at age 16 she graduated as valedictorian from Teague’s Booker T. Washington High School.
She went on to graduate from Texas Southern University (B.A) in Houston, from Our Lady of the Lake University (M.A. Social Work) in San Antonio and in 1985, she earned a PhD. from the University of Texas at Arlington.
After graduation from TSU, she worked as a Social Worker at John Sealy Hospital in Galveston; moved to Mississippi to work with the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), working with the celebrated activist Fannie Lou Hamer providing public housing and other services to impoverished Mississippians.
Later, she moved to Waco to be near her mother Eula Johnson in Teague and married Howard Andrew Jackson and became the mother to an extended family-stepdaughter, foster son, adopted daughter and biological daughter.
In Waco, she worked at the Methodist Home; she also served on the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles as a Governor Ann Richard’s appointee. She was well known in the community as a passionate advocate of volunteerism and public service. She was elected to District 1 Waco City Council from 2000 to 2004and in 2004, she was elected Waco City Mayor as the first black woman mayor in the city’s history.
Tragically her death in February, 2005 cut short her mayoral service to Waco, but her legacy is memorialized by the accomplishments she bequeathed to those she served. Her legacy is found in downtown Waco at South 4th and Franklin Streets with the Dr. Mae Jackson Development Center providing a myriad of community services she inspired.
Submitted by Patricia Pratt – Curator, Freestone County Historical Museum
