Tito Jackson (born April 11, 1975) is an American politician who was a member of the Boston City Council. He represented council District 7, representing parts of the Roxbury neighborhood and parts of Dorchester, South End, and Fenway. In 2017, he ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of Boston. After leaving the Boston City Council, Jackson worked in the cannabis industry. In 2022, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu appointed Jackson to the city's Commission on Black Men and Boys.
Jackson is considered to be a political progressive.
Early life, family, and education
Jackson was born to a young teenager who had been sexually assaulted. He was adopted by Rosa and Herb Jackson after months in foster care, and grew up in Roxbury’s Grove Hall neighborhood. His father was a community activist and his mother ran a home day care. In his activism, Jackson's father supported the election of political candidates of color through voter registration campaigns and applied pressure to construction companies in the city to employ more local workers and minorities. Jackson's father died in 2002. Jackson has credited his adoptive parents' progressive politics for shaping his own progressive politics.
Jackson attended Brookline High School and later graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. At university, Jackson founded a "Black Student Union" group which urged the university to work to diversify the makeup of its student body. Jackson was also elected the student body president. His alma mater granted him an additional honorary degree in 2018.
In 2018, Jackson reunited with his biological mother. His biological mother is one of the subjects of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas, which focused on desegregation busing in Boston.
Early political career
In 2007, Jackson served as the industry director for information technology in Governor Deval Patrick’s Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development. Later, Jackson worked as the political director of Governor Patrick's successful 2010 reelection campaign.
Boston City Council
In the Boston City Council election of 2009, Jackson ran as an at-large candidate. He lost in this first attempt at running for elected office by 11,676 votes.
Jackson ran in the 2011 special election for the 7th district Boston City Council seat to succeed Chuck Turner, who had been expelled from the City Council after a public corruption investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Jackson finished first out of seven candidates in the nonpartisan primary election and defeated Cornell Mills, the son of former State Senator Dianne Wilkerson, 82 percent to 16 percent in the general election.
Councillor Jackson was the Chair of the Committee on Education, and the Chair of the Special Committee on the Status of Black and Latino Men and Boys. Councillor Jackson also served as the Vice Chair of the Committee on Healthy Women, Families and Communities. In addition, he was a member of six other Committees: City, Neighborhood Services and Veteran Affairs; Homelessness, Mental Health and Recovery; Housing and Community Development, Jobs, Wages and Workforce Development; Public Safety and Criminal Justice; and together with all other Councillors, the Committee of the Whole.
In 2012, after Mayor Thomas Menino vetoed the City Council's first two proposals for its redistricted map, Jackson made his own proposal amending the previous map. The City Council passed Jackson's map, which was then approved by Mayor Menino.
In 2014, the City Council passed an ordinance by Jackson to create a commission on Black men and boys. Mayor Marty Walsh vetoed the ordinance, arguing that such a commission would, "duplicate and complicate efforts that my administration is already engaged in", and that the ordinance was written in such a way that he believed it would violate the Boston City Charter. Such a commission would eventually be formed in 2021, with the City Council passing a resolution to form a similar commission, which then-acting mayor Kim Janey signed into law in September 2021.
In 2015, Jackson applied pressure to the committee behind Boston's bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics for them to release the non-redacted copy of its original bid for the games. After the collapse of Boston's bid for the Olympics, the organization No Boston Olympics (which had opposed the bid) endorsed Jackson and three other incumbent Boston City Council members for reelection, praising them for "Demonstrat[ing] leadership by asking tough questions" to the leaders behind Boston's Olympic bid.