What does “Jack and Jill” mean?

The national Black family organization founded by mothers in 1938, and the upbringing its name now stands for.

Entry · catalog no. 3005

Jack and Jill

/ /ˈdʒæk ənd ˈdʒɪl/ /JAK and JIL

noun · Philadelphia / nationwide · 1930s

✓ Verified

Jack and Jill of America, Incorporated — a membership organization founded and run by Black mothers to build social, cultural and civic life for their children through local chapters. In everyday speech the name does double duty as shorthand for a whole class and upbringing, said sometimes with pride and sometimes with an edge about who gets let in.

“She was a Jack and Jill kid — cotillion, Links mother, the whole thing.”

Origin & Attribution

Philadelphia, January 24, 1938. Marion Stubbs Thomas gathered a circle of about twenty Black mothers whose children moved in the same professional world without knowing one another. Correct the standing error: it is often described as a sorority or fraternity auxiliary, or as an offshoot of the Links. It predates the Links by eight years and was founded independently, by mothers.

1938

Marion Stubbs Thomas convenes Philadelphia mothers on January 24; the first chapter forms

1947

Incorporated in Delaware on August 28 after chapters vote to form a national body

1999

Lawrence Otis Graham''s Our Kind of People puts the organization at the center of a national argument about Black class

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

Nationwide / diaspora

Philadelphia / nationwide · 1930s

Spoken by

Black professional families, Northeast first, then nationwide

$JACKANThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Steady

61 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

55/100

peak cultural energy

Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

First used

1938

in the culture

Mainstream crossover

1999

search interest spikes

Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.

Hear it spoken

By region — how it actually sounds

@auntiereg

Atlanta, GA

@deltasoul

Memphis, TN

Contribute your pronunciation

Citations & Sources

■

Our Kind of People: Inside America''s Black Upper Class, Lawrence Otis Graham — HarperCollins, chapter two · 1999

archive-desk

■

Up the Hill, first issue, ed. Ida Murphy Smith — organization magazine of record · May 1948

archive-desk

+ Cite a source