La Toya Yvonne Jackson (born May 29, 1956 in Gary, Indiana) is an American singer and the middle child of the Jackson family. Most notable for being featured on Playboy magazine and writing her memoirs on growing up in the Jackson family, she had a non-successful career as a singer during the 1980s and 1990s. She is the sister of the successful pop stars Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson.

La Toya was born the fifth of nine children to Joseph and Katherine Jackson in Gary, Indiana. After her mother became a devout Jehovah's Witness in 1966, La Toya, alongside her siblings, were doctrined to the religion. La Toya would spend most of her time alongside her mother practicing door-to-door evanglization as a result of her being a Witness. By 1974, La Toya was brought into the spotlight with her family after her father got the family to get together to perform several shows in Las Vegas and in other cities. By 1979, La Toya and her other sisters Rebbie and Janet formed a short-lived sister group though they never sung live together eventually breaking away after La Toya and Rebbie argued over the direction of the group. The next year, La Toya began work on her first solo album.

In 1980, LaToya released her self-titled debut. Besides the top 40 R&B and dance success of her first single, "If You Feel the Funk", the album failed to generate an audience. Her three subsequent albums afterwards also showcased similar limited success, though she scored a Billboard Hot 100 hit with 1984's "Heart Don't Lie", which peaked at #56. In 1988, Jackson released the album La Toya, which featured the single, "You're Gonna Get Rocked". Neither the album nor the single failed to make an impact even as it was Jackson's first album without the leadership of her father, Joseph, who was manager of her career until that year.

In 1989, the Bad Girl album was released. Her poor management, headed by her abusive husband Jack Gordon, issued the album to countless record labels. To this day, the Bad Girl album is one the only album in her catalog that is still in print, and it can be found under various titles and covers.

Jackson constantly struggled to make a dent musically releasing several cover albums of country music and Motown standards in the mid-1990s. She plans to release her first album in over a decade with Startin' Over. The album had been pushed back several times; her self-owned record label, Ja-Tail Enterprises, has issued various excuses but has yet to set a firm release date.

In 1989, La Toya ventured into nude modeling after her manager Jack Gordon coaxed her into posing nude for Playboy magazine. Her first cover and nude layout was one of the most successful issues in Playboy's storied history and generated a lot of buzz, mostly negative. She showed up again on Playboy in 1991 to promote her autobiography and later in a video for the magazine in 1994 becoming one of the first celebrities to have a Playboy video aired.

After marrying Jack Gordon in 1989, La Toya estranged herself from certain members of the family though she still spoke to her siblings, if often at rare occasions. In 1991, she was further estranged from the family after the book, La Toya: Growing Up in the Jackson Family, came out. The book went into scathing details, including one of Joseph reportedly committing sexual abuse among the female members of the family, notably Rebbie and La Toya. Rebbie defended her father denying the rumors while other members claimed Gordon had written in that part in the book.

In 1993, La Toya went to a press conference overseas and announced that she had believed rumors that Michael had sexually abused children during Michael's initial accusations of child molestation came out that year prompting members of the family to debuke charges claiming La Toya was "controlled and used" by Gordon. Two years later, she made headlines again for announcing the so-called "Jackson Family Secret Phone Number Line". By 1996, however, La Toya ran out on her manager after he reportedly forced her to dance at a strip joint in Cleveland. The former devout Jehovah's Witness (she was shunned in 1987) refused to do so and in return, was booed and heckled by the predominantly male crowd.

In 1997, she ended her estrangement with the entire Jackson family and returned home to Hayvenhurst. That year, she divorced from Jack Gordon. La Toya has no children and currently lives in Los Angeles and keeps close contact with her mother and siblings, especially Michael and Janet. The trio made headlines during Michael's child molestation, conspiracy and alcohol trial in 2005 when they walked together hand-in-hand prompting the tabloids to nickname them "Charlie's Angels".

In April 2006 La Toya attended the star-studded Mercedes-Benz Fall 2006 L.A. Fashion Week at Smashbox Studio in Los Angeles.

Her debut album is also being released by Cherry Pop records on May 15th 2006. Through the end of 2005 to the present, fans (known as Toy Soldiers) petitioned for the re-release of her back catalogue and managed to convince Cherry Pop records that it would be a successful venture. The CD was released in May 2006.