Today's Pride of Bed-Stuy: Hon. Randolph Jackson

February 25, 2012: The Honorable Randolph Jackson was born and raised on Marcy Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Jackson attended P.S. 9, J.H.S. 210, J.H.S. 51 and then Stuyvesant High School, before studying at New York University and then at Brooklyn Law School as a night student.

He graduated from NYU in 1965 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and then landed a job with the largest advertising agency in the world, J. Walter Thompson, in the Graybar Building at 420 Lexington Avenue. 

“I was sitting in my cubicle some months on the job and asked myself ‘How can I become president of this company?’ I didn’t have any influence, I wasn’t good at kissing up to people, so the chances are, I’m never going to become president of this company.  And  one day a thought ran through my head, ‘Gee, I wish I was back in school.’ So, three months later, I was back in law school. 

He had spent the summer after graduation working on a political campaign, and after a while, noticed that everybody important in the campaign was a lawyer.  And the candidate was a lawyer.  

So I said, “Maybe there’s something to this law thing.  I think I’ll try it.”

Jackson applied to Brooklyn Law School and was accepted. He kept his day job, and attended Brooklyn Law School and has never looked back

After working in the Wall Street Law Firm of Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Alexander and Mitchell and engaging in countless community service, legal and charitable activities, Randolph Jackson served as a Housing Court Judge. He then became a Civil Court Judge and a Criminal Court Judge. 

Jackson also was involved in city bar associations. In fact, he was co-founder of the Metropolitan Black Bar Association. The Metropolitan Black Bar was created in 1984 when the Harlem Lawyers Association and the Bedford-Stuyvesant Lawyers Association, of which Jackson was chair at the time, merged.

In 1987, Justice Jackson was then elected to a 14-year term as a Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York. 

Jackson is also a published author — writing on both legal and religious topics. He most recently wrote “Black People in the Bible,” a study of Biblical figures who have frequently been depicted as white, which they weren’t, he said.

“A lot of the scenes and action in the Bible took place in and around Africa. Every time you see Egypt, every time you see Ethiopia in the Bible, you realize they’re talking about people of color,” Justice Jackson said.

Jackson wrote the book after he was asked to deliver a church sermon on the same theme. It was unexpectedly popular, so Jackson undertook about a year of research on Biblical personages ranging from Noah and Moses to Jesus and his disciples. Some of the texts had to be compared to older Bible translations, he said.

“You have to go back to the King James translation, though. In the newer translations they changed Ethiopian to Nubian, or Sudanese. They changed black to dark, bronze to tanned,” Jackson explained.

In 2002, Jackson was re-elected to a second consecutive 14-year term on the Supreme Court.

Justice Jackson retired in 2010. But even after serving eight years of his second term, he had become the longest-serving judge in the Civil Term of Kings County Supreme Court-- one of the busiest courts in the country, serving the most populated county in the state.

The Honorable Randolph Jackson is a life member of the NAACP and the National Bar Association. He is an author, Bible Teacher, empowerment consultant, motivational speaker and patron of the arts.

Effective January 1, 2011, the Honorable Randolph Jackson, joined National Arbitration and Mediation (NAM). Judge Jackson will be available to mediate and arbitrate cases throughout the NY Metro area.

With significant experience in a wide range of civil matters, and a particular emphasis in the area of medical malpractice, Justice Randolph Jackson has dedicated himself to hard, selfless work in the legal system. And it’s paid off for this respected judge, who has earned a solid judicial reputation for compassion, fairness and practicality.

Hon. Randolph Jackson, we acknowledge your lifelong dedication and honor your contributions.

*Sources, The Brooklyn Eagle, www.ooblaw.com

**This is a reprint of an article that ran on Bed-Stuy Patch on February 22, 2011