Dr. Miles Jackson Jr., pictured above at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, grew up in Richmond but spent half his life in Hawaii, where he became an expert on the islands’ Black history. Now living in Dumfries, Virginia, the retired professor and Fulbright scholar published his eighth book last year. Photo by Muriel Jackson

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When we think of African American history, Hawaii may not be the first place that comes to mind. Now a new book by Virginia author Miles Jackson Jr. traces the history of African Americans in the Hawaiian Islands. 

Black sailors from New England began settling in the islands in the late 18th century, perhaps because the whaling industry offered a way to escape discrimination on the mainland.  

“Most of the ships that came to Hawaii came from Nantucket,” said Jackson, whose fourth book, Islands With Rainbows, Palm Trees and the Sun: Hawai’i’s Experience With Blacks, was published last year. 

“[Whaling ships] would sail through the West Indies and pick up crew members, so a lot of the people who came had Caribbean backgrounds…They came with all kinds of skills — brick and stone masonry, carpentry, and they were very much needed,” he said. 

“Then the wars came,” Jackson said, starting with the Spanish-American War when Black troops stopped in Hawaii on the way to the Philippines. World War I and II also introduced Black soldiers to the islands, and after the wars ended, some decided to settle there. 

Richmond roots 

Now 95, Jackson witnessed the changes and upheaval in America in the last century. His children attended the same Atlanta elementary school as Martin Luther King Jr.’s children, and years later, he met Barack Obama. 

Jackson grew up in segregated Richmond. His family subscribed to the Afro-American newspaper, and he admired the writing of its columnist Saunders Reading. Inspired to become a journalist, Jackson joined the yearbook staff at his high school, wrote letters to the editor, and majored in journalism at Virginia Union University, a historically black school in the city. 

In college, Jackson discovered a love for research.  

“I became interested in this whole business of seeking out information. I discovered archives and that archival science was a very intricate science. I was just fascinated,” he said. 

From there, Jackson graduated from Drexel University with a master’s in library science and took a job at a Philadelphia library, where he encouraged patrons to research their genealogy. 

“When I started making friends, people started to come into the library and ask, ‘How long did my family live here?’ … People were very happy to see me interested in that community,” he recalled. 

Jackson also took an interest in Africa’s newly independent countries, so he began inviting students and professors to the library to speak about Ghana, Nigeria and other places where Black people were thriving. 

“I thought, ‘This is another world out there,’” he said.  

At Hampton Institute, a black college in Hampton, Virginia, Jackson worked for four years as a librarian, launching a book fair that focused on Black authors. “The community fell in love with it. It was a whole new world in literature for young adults.” 

Moving overseas 

For another job opportunity, Jackson and his wife, Bernice, moved with their three children to American Samoa to work for the U.S. Department of the Interior. 

“I talked to my wife and she said, ‘Sure, let’s go,’” Jackson remembered. “My youngest child was born in Pongo Pongo. It was great for the children because they learned so much.” 

Jackson’s academic prowess and work experience have taken him all over the world. From 1968 to 1969, he was a Fulbright Professor at the University of Tehran in Iran. The following year, received a Ford Foundation Fellowship award to study in East and West Africa. 

Then, after a stint in upstate New York, where Jackson got his Ph.D. at Syracuse University, a serendipitous moment in Chicago changed his life again. 

While in Chicago for a conference, Jackson happened to stop for lunch at a café, where three Black men invited him to join them at their table. “Lo and behold, they said, ‘We’re from Hawaii, and we’re at this conference because we’re recruiting faculty members. Do you think you might be interested in living in Hawaii?’” 

When he was enlisted in the U.S. Navy, Jackson’s ship had once stopped in Hawaii. “I liked it very much, but I never thought about living there or working there,” he said. 

Still, his wife was enthusiastic about the idea of moving to Hawaii. 

“She said, ‘You’ve got to say yes,’” he recalled. “She was a brave soul.” 

Jackson took a job as a professor at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa and seven years later was appointed dean of the Graduate School of Library Science. That time in his career was exciting, he said, because “Computers were beginning to come out,” and he learned as much as he could about the new technology. 

Meanwhile, his four children “liked [Hawaii] very much. They took to it,” he said, and the community embraced them. 

“People were so kind to me and were so interested in what I was interested in. Pretty soon, I got embedded in campus politics and made a lot of friends. People would be coming to the library to meet me. 

“I got to know people in the islands, and people would request that I come to talk about a variety of things, including African American history.” 

After Jackson retired in 1995, he wrote several history books, including And They Came: A Brief and Annotated Bibliography of Blacks in Hawaii, in 2001, and They Followed the Trade Winds: African Americans in Hawaii in 2004. 

He kept busy, offering his expertise as executive producer of a 2010 documentary about African Americans in Hawaii, “Holding Fast the Dream.” That same year, he received the NAACP 2010 Martin Luther King Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Back to Virginia 

Daughter Muriel Jackson edited her father’s most recent book. 

“He was easy to work with,” she said. “He has such a calm demeanor — he loves everybody, no matter what. I’m so grateful that growing up I had a chance to travel the world and learn about these other cultures.”  

Miles Jackson is working on a memoir now. Although he loves living closer to his five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, sometimes he misses his lush Hawaiian home on the water.  

“I could look out at the Pacific Ocean. It was heaven to me,” he said.