Clarice Jackson has been fighting for struggling readers for decades. Now she wants backup.
Clarice Jackson has spent more than three decades working at the intersection of dyslexia advocacy, civil rights and educational reform. Now she is making a public case for two of the most prominent organizations in those spaces to stop operating in parallel and start working together. In a recent episode of the Literacy Now Together podcast, Jackson called on the NAACP and Decoding Dyslexia to build a formal partnership around what she describes as a literacy crisis affecting thousands of children who struggle with reading and have not received the instruction they need.
Jackson was joined on the episode by Kareem Weaver, who appears in the documentary The Right to Read and the NAACP Image Award-nominated film Left Behind, and Brett Tingley of Parents for Reading Justice. The conversation covered the state of reading instruction in the United States, the particular barriers facing students with dyslexia and the specific opportunity that exists when a civil rights organization and a grassroots parent movement decide to pursue the same goal.
What brought Clarice Jackson to literacy advocacy
Jackson’s path into this work started not with a policy brief or a conference but with a child. At 19, she became the legal guardian of a young girl with severe dyslexia who could not read basic words. Jackson immersed herself in special education law and structured literacy practices. Within a year, the child’s reading abilities had improved dramatically. That experience shaped the next three decades of her professional life.
In 2012, she founded The Voice Advocacy Center, an organization focused on literacy screening, structured literacy tutoring and parent advocacy. The center has served children and adults with dyslexia and worked directly with families and educators to connect them with reading interventions grounded in evidence rather than convention.
Her advocacy has also shaped national policy. In 2014, Jackson authored the NAACP National Dyslexia Resolution, which passed unanimously and helped bring the instructional needs of students with dyslexia into the broader civil rights conversation. That resolution laid the groundwork for what she is now calling for on a larger scale.
Dyslexia, the NAACP and a California model worth replicating
The podcast episode points to a concrete example of what collaboration between the two organizations can produce. The 2019 California NAACP Dyslexia Resolution, authored by the Oakland branch and supported by Decoding Dyslexia California, demonstrated that NAACP chapters and Decoding Dyslexia state chapters can work together effectively on literacy initiatives. Jackson and her co-hosts are pushing for that model to spread nationally.
The episode also touched on cultural history. Participants reflected on how The Cosby Show introduced dyslexia to many Black households through the character Theo Huxtable, opening conversations in communities that had limited access to clinical vocabulary or formal diagnoses. That cultural moment, they argued, illustrates how public awareness and community advocacy can move together toward better educational outcomes when the conditions are right.
Jackson’s academic work and the literacy conference ahead
Jackson’s advocacy has recently entered the academic record. Two scholarly articles she authored appear in the Spring 2026 edition of The Midwest Quarterly (Volume 67, No. 3), a special issue focused on dyslexia and reading failure. The first, titled Literacy as Exodus: The Reconstruction Literacy Paradox and the Collapse of Educational Will, and the second, Why Black Literacy Still Matters: History, Evidence, and the Case for Targeted Literacy Action, introduce a framework she calls the Reconstruction Literacy Paradox. The framework is designed to examine institutional accountability and persistent literacy disparities through a historical lens.
Both pieces reflect Jackson’s broader argument that the literacy crisis facing Black children and students with dyslexia is not a new problem. It has roots that run through American history, and addressing it requires naming that history clearly.
Dyslexia awareness and the road to the Black Literacy Matters conference
Jackson is also the founder of the Black Literacy Matters Conference 2027, a national professional learning event bringing together educators, researchers, parents, advocates and policymakers. The conference is centered on structured literacy, the science of reading, dyslexia-informed practices and intervention strategies. Dates and location are expected to be announced through BlackLiteracyMatters.org.
Throughout the podcast episode, Jackson and Weaver returned to the same point. Parents are one of the most underused forces in literacy advocacy, and the organizations best positioned to reach those parents, the NAACP and Decoding Dyslexia, have more shared ground than divided. Building on that shared ground is the argument Jackson has spent her career making, and the one she is now pressing publicly.