Jackson (Henry M.) Collection
Henry Martin Jackson was born Everett, Washington, in 1912 to Peter and Marine (Marie) Jackson, who were Norwegian immigrants. Jackson, the youngest child, had two older sisters, Gertrude and Marie. He earned his law degree from the University of Washington in 1935 and was elected Snohomish County prosecutor in 1938.
Jackson began his Congressional career at the age of 28, first as a representative and then as a senator during a period that spanned 43 years and nine presidents. During that time, he chaired the Democratic National Committee in 1960, helping to get Senator John F. Kennedy elected president, served as a member on the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, the Armed Services Committee, the Governmental Affairs Committee, and was a longtime chairman of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs (which was renamed the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources). Jackson was a strong player in foreign and defense policies, as well as domestic energy and environmental policies.
In 1972, and again in 1976, Jackson unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic presidential ticket, losing to North Dakota Senator George McGovern and former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, respectively. He married Helen Hardin in 1961, and they had two children, Anna Marie and Peter. In 1983, he died at age 71 at his home in Everett.
About the Database
The Henry M. Jackson digital collection was completed in 2007. The photographs were selected from holdings in the UW Special Collections Division by Heather Davis and the scanning and metadata done by Tammy Salman, Michelle Vallance and Kristin Kinsey. The work was funded by a grant from the Henry M. Jackson Foundation awarded in 2006. The images were scanned from photographic prints and 35mm slides in grayscale and color using a Microtek Scanmaker 9600L and saved in .jpg format. Some manipulation of the images was done to present the clearest possible digital image. The scanned images were then linked with descriptive data using the CONTENTdm software suite. The original collection resides in the UW Libraries Special Collections Division as the Henry M. Jackson papers, Accession No. 3560.
