Rebecca Cox Jackson was a seamstress, preacher, and founder of a Shaker community in Philadelphia. She was born near Philadelphia into a free Black family, and spent the first years of her life at her grandmother's home. At the age of ten, she began looking after her younger siblings; her mother died three years later. Rebecca then lived with her brother Joseph Cox, an AME minister. She married a man who lived in her brother's home, Samuel S. Jackson. Rebecca took care of the house, and took in work as a seamstress.

In July 1830, her life changed when a thunderstorm inspired a religious epiphany. She began to have visions, and she shared her spiritual experiences with neighbors at a "Covenant Meeting." Rebecca came from a Methodist background, and believed in "sanctification," a post-conversion spiritual state in which one felt freed of "intentional sin." A Holiness movement emerged in which sanctification was celebrated, and Rebecca became involved in Holiness prayer meetings. Critics, including some Methodist ministers, were intimidated by her reluctance to affiliate herself formally with the church, though Morris Brown, a Bishop of the AME Church, became a supporter after hearing her preach.

Rebecca and her brother drifted apart, and her marriage failed, in part because her husband reneged on his promise to teach her to read. Rebecca's desire to share her faith led her to learn to read and write as an adult, and she kept a written record of her religious development. She became an itinerant preacher to both Black and White audiences, though her beliefs, including celibacy and the power of the inner voice, alienated some.

Rebecca realized that her convictions resembled those of the Shaker faith. She became a prophet among the Shakers in Watervliet, New York, and lived with them for several years. When she became disenchanted with Shaker attitudes toward Blacks, she moved to Philadelphia with colleague Rebecca Perot. The pair returned to New York six years later, and worked out their differences with the Watervliet Shakers. With the support of Watervliet behind them, they moved back to Philadelphia to begin a Black Shaker community. Their new society incorporated Shaker beliefs with rituals from Black women's prayer meetings.

After Rebecca's death in 1871, Perot changed her name to "Mother Rebecca Jackson" and succeeded Rebecca as the head of the Philadelphia family. As late as 1896, W. E. B. DuBois documented Shaker presence in his report on Black Philadelphia, and a 1908 publication referred to the Philadelphia colony.

Source: Prefatory materials; "Africans in America"