The milestone came on the first day of fall classes.

The College-Durant apartments, a $14 million, 120-bed graduate student-housing facility that opened two years ago, is now the Ida Louise Jackson Graduate House.

Jackson was the first African American to earn a teaching credential in California and the first to teach in the Oakland public schools.

"This is a major step in the right direction, and for us it's a historic first as well," said Mary Ann Mason, dean of the graduate division. "And for this historic first, I don't think we could have chosen anyone better (to honor)."

The University of California, Berkeley's charter was created in 1868. University officials say a building never has been named after an African-American woman. The Ida Louise Jackson Graduate House also is the first building on campus dedicated strictly to graduate students.

Jackson, who died at age 93 in 1996, was a teacher, social activist and pioneer for African-American rights. In 1972, she donated hundreds of acres of land from her family's sheep ranch in Mendocino County and asked that the proceeds go to graduate fellowships for black students working on their dissertations.

"She did a lot of good despite facing a lot of challenges," said

Kathleen Sterling, a recipient of the Ida Louise Jackson Fellowship.

Jackson made great strides in her life and was remembered by many of her friends and sorority sisters from Alpha Kappa Alpha during a ceremony Monday at the housing facility.

But her legacy didn't come without struggles to overcome racial prejudice. The daughter of an ex-slave enrolled at the university in 1920. As one of only 17 African-American students, she seldom was called upon by professors and students rarely chatted with her, university officials said.

She joined the Rho chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha and became its president. When it was time for yearbook club pictures, she borrowed $45 from her mother and arranged for the portrait of her sorority sisters. When the books were published the picture had been omitted because it wasn't "representative of the student body," friends and university officials said.

Jackson went on to earn a bachelor's degree and a master's degree from UC Berkeley in 1926 and began teaching in Oakland. She taught at Prescott Intermediate School and later at McClymonds High School. It would be 13 years before a second African American joined the teaching ranks.

Even as Jackson was making strides in education, she continued to work on social activism issues as national president of Alpha Kappa Alpha. She led sorority trips to the Deep South to help educate blacks, and founded a summer school for rural teachers in her native Mississippi in 1933, according to university background information. She also launched the Mississippi Health Project, which helped inoculate more than 4,000 infants and children against diphtheria and cholera.

"I think it's a very important (day) because Berkeley has paused to honor a very deserving alumna," said Barbara K. Phillips, a close friend of Jackson and a former national president of Alpha Kappa Alpha. "Not only was she an alumna, but a great benefactor to the university."

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