JACKSON, a city of western Tennessee, U.S.A., on the Forked Deer river, 85m. N.E. of Memphis; the county seat of Madison county. It is on Federal highway 7o, and is served by the Gulf, Mobile and Northern, the Illinois Central, the Mobile and Ohio, and the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis railways. The population was 18,86o in 1920 (33% negroes) and was 22,172 by the Federal census of 1930. Jackson has a large wholesale trade ; is a shipping point for cotton (of which 21,36o bales were ginned in the county in 1926), corn, fruits and other agricultural products, and has railroad repair shops and numerous other man ufacturing industries, with an output in 1925 valued at $7,012,544.
It is the seat of Union university; a State agricultural experi ment station; and Lane college for negroes, founded in 188o by the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, which was organized in Jackson and has its publishing offices here. Jackson was settled about 1820, incorporated as a town in 1823, chartered as a city in 1845 and in 1907 adopted a new charter establishing local pro hibition. In 1862, after Gen.
Grant's advance into Tennessee, it became an important base of operations for the Federal army, and from October of that year was Grant's headquarters.