Ellen Swepson Jackson (1935 – 2005) was an American educator and activist. She is best known for founding Operation Exodus, a program that bused students from overcrowded, predominantly black Boston schools to less crowded, predominantly white schools in the 1960s. The program paved the way for the desegregation of Boston's public schools. Early life and education Jackson was born in Boston on October 29, 1935, the middle child of David and Marguerite Booker Swepson. She grew up in the Sugar Hill section of Roxbury and attended Girls' Latin School. As a teen she belonged to the NAACP Youth Council. She graduated from Boston State College in 1958 and received her master's degree in education from Harvard University in 1971. In 1954, during her first year of college, she married Hugo Jackson. The couple had five children. Career From 1962 to 1964, she served as parent coordinator for the Northern Student Movement, organizing black parents and advocating for students' equal rights. She also worked for a Boston bank at the time, and was fired in 1962 for going to a rally to hear Martin Luther King Jr. speak. She was involved in voter registration, and picketed for better representation on the board of directors of Action for Boston Community Development. She worked as a Social Service Supervisor for the Head Start program in 1964. Operation Exodus Jackson was a housewife with five children when she formed the Roxbury-North Dorchester Parents' Council in 1965. The neighborhood's predominantly black schools were overcrowded, and students were usually encouraged to enter vocational programs rather than prepare for college. The Parents' Council wrote letters and circulated petitions, but were unable to get the Boston School Committee to change anything. Then one day someone gave Jackson a document showing the numbers of students and seats in each classroom and school in Boston. She and other parents conceived the idea of sending students from overcrowded schools to less crowded ones, usually in white neighborhoods. They founded a program called Operation Exodus, with Jackson as executive director. From 1965 to 1969, the program transported over 1,000 students to less crowded schools. Jackson's actions laid the groundwork for the filing of the 1972 NAACP lawsuit that led to the desegregation of Boston's public schools. At a testimonial for Jackson in 1975, U.S. district judge David S. Nelson said, "I always thought of Ellen and Operation Exodus as the beginning of