Walter Clinton Jackson was born in Hayston, Georgia, on June 28, 1879. He attended the Hayston public schools and was graduated from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia in 1900. In 1902, after teaching two years in Georgia, he came to Greensboro, N. C., where he taught and served as principal of Greensboro High School until 1909. In that year he joined the faculty of the State Normal and Industrial College (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro) as professor and head of the Department of History. In 1915 he was named dean of the college and six years later was appointed vice president and chairman of the faculty of social science, positions he held until 1932. From 1932 to 1934 he was dean of the School of Public Administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and director of the Summer School of the Consolidated University.
In 1934 he returned to the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro) as dean of administration. (In 1945, the title was changed to Chancellor and Vice President of the Consolidated University). He retired from the Chancellor’s post in 1950 and died in Greensboro on August 12, 1959.
Among the many honors he received were the honorary degrees of Doctor of Laws from Mercer University (1926), Doctor of Humane Letters from Bennett College (1949) and Doctor of Laws from Woman’s College (1955). The campus library building was named for Jackson in 1960. He was cited for the North Carolina Educational Hall of Fame in March 1965.