By Javacia Harris Bowser | For the Birmingham Times
It’s a winter Wednesday morning, and Sherri Jackson is sipping hot mocha at Alicia’s Coffee in Birmingham’s Civil Rights district. In a few hours she’ll head to WIAT CBS 42, where she serves as an evening anchor, telling the stories of Birmingham’s communities. But first she shared a story of her own, a story that began at 16th Street Baptist Church, just a few blocks from where she now sits.
“When I came down for my job interview, I wanted to see the church because growing up that’s all I knew about Birmingham,” shared Jackson, who is a native of St. Louis, Missouri, and has been in Birmingham since 1998.
On Sept. 15, 1963, Ku Klux Klan members bombed the church, killing four young girls. Jackson admits that this history initially made her reluctant to move to Birmingham, but soon she was proud to call the Magic City home.
“I came and I saw the beautiful hills,” she recalled. “And you weren’t treated like you were some outsider. People were kind to you.”
She also relished the chance to learn more about the Civil Rights Movement and its leaders.
“[The Rev.] Fred Shuttlesworth was in and out of the city at the time, so you were literally walking around with history,” Jackson said. “It was like you were in a book.”
For Women’s History Month, The Birmingham Times highlights some of the most watched Black women anchors in our area. These women have dedicated their life’s work to sharing other people’s stories. Now, it’s time to share their stories.
Career Path: After graduating from Morehead State University in Morehead, Kentucky, in 1990, Jackson was hired as an anchor at WGXA-TV in Macon, Georgia.
“I went there as the main anchor right out of college, and I didn’t know anything about the industry other than what I did in college at Morehead State,” she remembered. “And we had a great program at Morehead State.”
Still, Jackson didn’t feel secure in her skills. So, for her next job, she wanted to focus on learning to be a better reporter. She did health reporting for WSAV-TV in Savannah, Georgia, from 1991 to 1993.
“I got my first award in Savannah reporting on the AIDS epidemic and how people were being affected in Georgia,” she recalled. “I learned you can really have an impact on a community.”
Jackson also worked for WSAZ-TV in Charleston and Huntington, West Virginia, where she sharpened her governmental reporting skills.
“From there I came [to Birmingham], and this is a news person’s news market,” she said.
Soon after Jackson started, she found herself covering major news events, such as the 1998 abortion clinic bombing and the 1998 tornadoes.
“By that point, I was secure as a reporter anchor,” she said.
Career Highlights: Jackson had the opportunity to follow artist Elizabeth MacQueen for nine months to chronicle the making of the Four Spirits Statue in Birmingham’s historic Kelly Ingram Park, which pays homage to the four girls killed in the 16th Street Church bombing. That work led to the Emmy Award-winning documentary “Hope and Honor.”
“That was full circle for me — from me wanting to see the church when I got here to this opportunity to follow this artist who wanted to honor the sacrifice of these girls,” she said.
Jackson also points to the CBS 42 team’s award-winning coverage of the pollution in North Birmingham and its effect on generations of families as another career highlight. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared the area a Superfund Site shortly after the broadcast of CBS 42’s “Deadly Deception.”
“Over the years, I learned that we can have an impact people and we can affect change by telling people’s stories,” she said.
On Changes in the Media: “I’m excited about the technology that helps communities tell their own stories,” Jackson said. “I think that’s going to be a positive change long-term for communities to get their stories out. They are not going to be so reliant on corporate America to do that. The citizen journalist has so many tools now that were not available in the past.”
That said, Jackson is concerned about a pervasive lack of media literacy: “I think the negative is that there’s so much out there that’s not necessarily properly vetted.”
Most Challenging Parts of Her Career: As a public figure, Jackson sometimes gets negative messages from viewers about things as trivial as makeup and as serious as accusing her of presenting slanted reporting on President Donald Trump.
“One lady sent me something saying, ‘Your eyebrows are crooked,’” Jackson said.
She brushes off those comments with a laugh, but Jackson is deeply concerned about viewers who no longer trust professional journalists and about the danger some journalists are facing. She points to Don Lemon, who was arrested and charged with federal civil rights violations for covering a January 2026 anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protest in St. Paul, Minnesota, and to the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of “Today” show anchor Savannah Guthrie.
But Jackson knows being a journalist has always required bravery.
“I think about Ida B. Wells reporting on lynching and the courage it took for her to do what she was doing in an investigative way and tell those stories,” Jackson said.
On Being a Black Woman in Broadcasting: “When I was in West Virginia, I was the only Black person in the newsroom,” Jackson shared.
That experience made membership in the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) essential for her.
“I learned my craft mostly through NABJ,” she said, pointing to the numerous workshops and reel critiques she had the opportunity to participate in during the organization’s conventions.
“That is where my professional development came from,” she said.
Jackson also sees NABJ as an advocacy organization. “Organizations like NABJ are important because they are a voice for the journalist,” she said. “They say things to the industry that we can’t say.”
On Representation: Growing up, Jackson and her family loved watching the news: “It was destination TV for us,” she said.
For Jackson, it was more. As she saw Susan Kidd, a Black woman who was a prominent St. Louis news anchor that rocked a bold afro on camera, she could see herself.
“I wanted to be Susan Kidd,” Jackson said. “Since I was 12 or 13, that’s what I wanted to do — and I’ve never wanted to do anything else.”
Once she came to Birmingham, Jackson felt it was her turn to be an inspiration.
“I felt I had so much to represent because people would give you so much love,” she said of the Birmingham community. “I felt like I have to be good at what I do and represent excellence for the people in the community who were so extremely proud.”
Sherri Jackson can be seen on WIAT CBS 42 anchoring the evening newscasts on weekdays at 4 p.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m., and 10 p.m.
