Before his death, Frederick ‘Fred’ Jackson saw Miami’s tech potential

Community advocate Frederick “Fred” Jackson Jr. was known for his affable personality and optimistic view of life. He died on Feb. 13 at the age of 77 from complications from Parkinson’s disease, leaving behind a legacy of fellowship as a devoted husband, father and voice for Miami’s Black community members.

Jackson was born in East Orange, New Jersey, on Jan. 5, 1947, as the only child of Frederick Jackson and Evelyn Reed. He spent much of his time at his local YMCA community center and had an affinity for learning. After excelling in high school, he received a scholarship to attend the University of Chicago, where he majored in psychology.

“He was a gentleman, a nice guy,” remembered Jackson’s widow, Yvonne. “He was intelligent and could hold an easy conversation. He could interact with all kinds of people.”

Yvonne met Fred during a 1987 ski trip for Black professionals in Mont-Tremblant, Canada, and the two quickly became inseparable. The couple married in 1989 and in 1992 settled in South Florida, where Fred worked at IBM for nearly 30 years in sales and later on its mergers and acquisitions team. Yvonne was a senior executive for Burger King.

Jackson believed in reaching back as he climbed the corporate ladder and saw Miami as a place where he could do that. Upon meeting an executive at the YMCA of South Florida, he mentioned how valuable the community center had been to him as a boy growing up in New Jersey and joined the organization’s board soon thereafter.

Whether it was in leadership roles as a longtime member of Sigma Pi Phi fraternity or as a trustee at Miami Gardens’ historically Black college Florida Memorial University, Jackson believed he was only as important as the people he could help uplift.

Family was important to Jackson, and he adored his son Doug, 54, and his daughter Cortney, 42. Doug’s wife, Roni, had fond memories of how warm her father-in-law was when she married his son and joined the Jackson family.

“He told me that he was very proud of me and that I always had my family behind me,” the education tech founder said. “By family, he meant him. That meant very much to me as an in-law. He accepted me like a daughter.”

In 1998, Jackson worked on a volunteer project during his time as chairman of the board for the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce in which he posited how Miami could emerge as a tech hub for South and Central America.

More than 25 years later, top tech companies like Meta have built offices in Miami, and Florida Memorial is helping students of color gain access to lucrative tech jobs.

Fred and Yvonne Jackson retired from their corporate jobs in 2006 and began spending six months each year living in Martha’s Vineyard, where they also had a home, before permanently moving from Miami in 2016. In his later years, Fred enjoyed traveling with Yvonne and playing Mexican dominoes with his family, including his two grandsons, Frederick, 23, and Noah, 20.

With a passion for helping others, Fred Jackson, or “Mr. Miami” as he was often called, always found a way to move forward — and he wouldn’t hesitate to tell you how you could get involved, too.