Kenneth T. Jackson

Kenneth Terry Jackson (born 1939) is a professor of history and social sciences at Columbia University. A frequent television guest, he is best known as an urban historian and a preeminent authority on New York City, where he lives on the Upper West Side.

Jackson was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1939. He earned his B.A. in 1961 from University of Memphis, where he was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, and his Ph.D. in 1966 at the University of Chicago. He served as an assistant professor for the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base from 1965 to 1968 and then joined the Columbia faculty as an assistant professor in 1968, earning his tenure by 1970.

Jackson's achievements as an author include The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915–1930 (1967), Cities in American History (1972), Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (1985), and The Encyclopedia of New York City (1995), for which he served as the primary editor. Crabgrass Frontier, a comprehensive study of the factors influencing suburban growth in the United States is the preeminent source on the history of American suburbanization.The Encyclopedia of New York City is a massive collection of entries and articles that encompass much of modern-day New York and the city's history.