"During the 1930s and 1940s, when America had little interest in addressing racial inequality, Luther P. Jackson became a leading voice in the struggle for racial justice. This biography tells the story of the professor and political activist who cajoled, implored, and lobbied black Virginians to vote - a man who fervently believed that education was at the core of the search for social change." "Long before the sit-ins and freedom marches of the 1960s, Jackson strove to erase the assumptions of racial inferiority that infected African Americans. Understanding that blacks had to change their minds before they could change their world, he set out to make people "vote conscious."" "Largely forgotten, even in Virginia, until the author resurrected his story, Jackson was involved in almost every important civil rights and liberal initiative in the South in the second quarter of the 20th century. His forceful program of political education laid the groundwork for the full-fledged assault on segregation of the 1950s, when Martin Luther King and other leaders of the civil rights movement emerged to stand on Jackson's shoulders."--BOOK JACKET.