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Mary Jane Richardson Jones

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Mary Jane Richardson Jones
Portrait of Mary Richardson Jones by Aaron E. Darling, circa 1865
Mary Richardson Jones, 1865
Born
Mary Jane Richardson

1819
Memphis, Tennessee, US
DiedDecember 26th, 1909 (aged 89)
Chicago, Illinois, US
OccupationActivist
Spouse(s)John Jones

Mary Jane Richardson Jones (1819 – December 26, 1909) was an American abolitionist, philanthropist, suffragist, and activist.

Born in Tennessee, she moved to Illinois with her family as a teenager, where she lived the rest of her life. Along with her husband, John Jones, she was a leading African-American figure in the early history of Chicago and a prominent citizen of the city. After his 1879 death, she continued to support the cause of African-American civil rights and advancement in Chicago, as well as becoming a suffragist. Historian Wanda A. Hendricks has described her as a wealthy "aristocratic matriarch, presiding over the [city's] black elite for two decades".[1]

Early life[]

Mary Jane Richardson was born in 1819 in Memphis, Tennessee. Richardson was from a free black family, the daughter of Elijah and Diza Richardson.[2][3][4] Her father was a blacksmith, while her mother, originally from South Carolina, was a homemaker.[2][5] Richardson was one of the middle children among nine born to the Richardsons between 1810 and 1845.[2]

In the 1830s, she moved with her family to Alton in Madison County, Illinois.[6] As a teenager, she experienced the riots surrounding the murder of anti-slavery newspaperman and campaigner Elijah Parish Lovejoy in Alton. Lovejoy's funeral passed by her father's house, an event which Richardson "vividly" remembered years later.[7]

Marriage and move to Chicago[]

Black and white portrait of the couple sitting side by side
Mary Jane Richardson Jones with her husband John shortly after their marriage

In 1841, she married John Jones, taking his name. He was a free black man originally from North Carolina, whom Jones had first met in Tennessee and who moved to Alton to woo her.[3] The couple, ever mindful that their status as free could be called into question, secured fresh copies of freedman's papers before an Alton court on November 28, 1844.[3] Jones moved with him to Chicago in March 1845, only eight years after the city's incorporation.[3] On the way, they were nevertheless suspected of being runaway slaves and detained, but were freed on the appeal of their stagecoach driver.[8]

The couple arrived in the city with only $3.50 to their name, pawning a watch to afford rent and the purchase of two stoves. However, by 1850, they were able to afford their own home as John Jones' tailoring business succeeded.[3] Although both were illiterate on their arrival in the city, they quickly taught themselves to read and write, viewing it as key to earning respect.[3]

Antebellum life in Chicago[]

In Chicago, the Joneses, along with their daughter Lavinia, were members of a small community of African-Americans, which numbered only 140 people in the city at their arrival.[9][10] Along with three other women, Jones became a leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church based at Quinn Chapel, and developed it into a well-trafficked stop on the Underground Railroad.[6][8][9]

While her husband's tailoring business at 119 Dearborn Street prospered and he achieved political success, Jones managed the family home as a center of black activism and resistance to the Black Codes and other restrictive laws like the Fugitive Slave Act.[4][8][10] Their friends included prominent abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and John Brown.[10] Brown and his associates, described by Jones as "the roughest looking men I ever saw", stayed with the Joneses on their way east to their raid at Harpers Ferry. Jones provided new clothes for the radicals, including, as she recalled in an account given years later, the garb Brown was hanged in six months later.[11]

Together with her husband, Jones assisted hundreds of slaves fleeing north to Canada at a time when such actions were illegal, standing guard at the door during meetings of abolitionists.[1] Writing in 1905, their daughter Lavinia Jones Lee recalled her mother personally loading fugitives onto trains north at the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad station on Sherman Street while slave catchers watched, kept away by a restless anti-slavery crowd.[3][11] Jones kept track of those she had assisted, writing letters to many former fugitives and forming a network of aid centered on her and her husband.[12]

After the Civil War began in 1861, Jones recruited for the United States Colored Troops. Along with other activists like Sattira Douglas, she also led the founding of the , which allocated direct aid to former slaves as well as providing a forum for political action.[13]

Photograph of Mary Richardson Jones taken in 1883 by Baldwin & Drake in Chicago, Illinois
Cabinet photograph of Jones taken in 1883

Later life – continued activism[]

Jones, described by historian Richard Junger as a woman of strong "convictions and abilities", continued to advocate for integration and civil rights after the war ended. In 1867, Theodore Tilton, a New York journalist, planned a visit to Chicago's Crosby Opera House to give a lecture. Jones wrote to him to warn him that the audience was to be segregated. Upset by this disclosure, Tilton pressed the Opera House to integrate its seating and personally presented tickets to Jones, reading the letter she had written to him to his audience at the beginning of his talk.[3]

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed both the Jones family home and John Jones' tailoring business, but the properties were insured, and the family was able to rebuild, building a new house near Prairie Avenue.[3]

Widowhood[]

Following her husband's death from Bright's disease in May 1879,[4] Jones became independently wealthy.[10][14] Her husband's estate was valued at over $70,000; he had been one of the city's richest men.[7][15] Jones dedicated her fortune to political activism, writing that "a woman should do all she could."[3][6] She contributed significantly to Hull House, the Phylis Wheatley Club in Chicago, and Provident Hospital.[16]

Cabinet B&W photograph of Jones sitting, with her granddaughter standing next to her
Jones with her granddaughter, Theodora Lee Purnell, in 1883

Moving to 29th Street, her stately new home reflected her "economic status and social prominence" in the city, according to the historian Christopher Robert Reed.[17] One scholar, Junger, has written that Jones was considered the most prominent of the "old guard" African-American community that had arrived in the city before the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.[1][3] Historian Wanda A. Hendricks has described her as a wealthy "aristocratic matriarch, presiding over the [city's] black elite for two decades".[1]

Supporting younger activists[]

Jones was not quick to become a suffragist, citing the example of Mary Edmonia Lewis, another prominent black woman who had been hesitant about the suffrage movement.[3] However, once she decided to support the cause of women's voting, Jones hosted Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt and others at her home for meetings.[6][10] She also mentored and supported younger black activists like Fannie Barrier Williams and Daniel Hale Williams – in the latter case, providing him lodgings at her home and funding his medical education.[1]

Along with Barrier Williams, Jones ran the women's section of the Prudence Crandall Literary Club, a prominent forum for black activism and feminism in Chicago. Emphasizing moral and social improvement, Jones told a Chicago Tribune reporter writing an 1888 story on "Cultured Negro Ladies" that "we want more justice to women and more virtue among men."[1] Active in the women's club movement, Jones was the first chair of Ida B. Wells's new club in 1894, recruiting for the organization and lending it her prestige.[1][4]

She died on December 26, 1909. At her passing, the Chicago Defender reported that, "loved and admired by everyone," Jones had "reached the ripe age of 89 years with the full possession of all her faculties."[3] She is buried alongside her husband at Chicago's Graceland Cemetery, under a tombstone which reads "Grandma Jonesie".[1][8][10]

References[]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Hendricks, Wanda A. (2013). Fannie Barrier Williams: Crossing the Borders of Region and Race. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-09587-0. OCLC 1067196558.
  2. ^ a b c "John Jones: Social Honors to Chicago's Favorite Colored Citizen: the Thirtieth Anniversary of His Residence in the City". The Chicago Tribune. March 12, 1875. p. 3. Retrieved May 9, 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Junger, Richard (2008). "'God and man helped those who helped themselves': John and Mary Jones and the Culture of African American Self-Sufficiency in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Chicago". Journal of Illinois History. 11 (2): 111–32. hdl:2027/inu.30000125384218 – via HathiTrust Digital Library.
  4. ^ a b c d Women building Chicago, 1790–1990 : a biographical dictionary. Rima Lunin Schultz, Adele Hast, Paul Avrich Collection. Bloomington, Indiana. 2001. ISBN 0-253-33852-2. OCLC 44573291.CS1 maint: others (link)
  5. ^ Smith, Jessie Carney; Jackson, Millicent Lownes; Winn, Lynda T. (2006). Encyclopedia of African American business. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 424–426. ISBN 0-313-33109-X. OCLC 63660167.
  6. ^ a b c d Harbour, Jennifer (September 14, 2020). "Mary Jane Richardson Jones, Emancipation and Women's Suffrage Activist". National Park Service. Archived from the original on January 1, 2021. Retrieved January 1, 2021.
  7. ^ a b Lusk, David W. (1887). Politics and Politicians of Illinois: Anecdotes and Incidents, a Succinct History of the State, 1809–1887. Springfield, Illinois: H.W. Rokker. pp. 341–342. Archived from the original on January 18, 2021.
  8. ^ a b c d "Early Chicago: Slavery in Illinois". WTTW Chicago. DuSable to Obama – Chicago's Black Metropolis. July 5, 2018. Archived from the original on January 1, 2021. Retrieved January 1, 2021.
  9. ^ a b Reed, Christopher Robert (2005). Black Chicago's first century. 1833–1900. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. pp. 65–69. ISBN 978-0-8262-2128-5. OCLC 969830027.
  10. ^ a b c d e f Kaba, Mariame; McDowell, Essence (2018). Lifting As They Climbed. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books. p. 13.
  11. ^ a b Alexander, William H.; Newby-Alexander, Cassandra; Ford, Charles Howard (2009). "Henry O. Wagoner, Civil Rights, and Black Economic Opportunity in Frontier Chicago and Denver, 1846-1887". Voices from within the veil: African Americans and the experience of democracy. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publication. p. 148. ISBN 978-1-4438-1176-7. OCLC 667003527.
  12. ^ Harbour, Jennifer R. (2020). Organizing freedom: Black emancipation activism in the Civil War midwest. Champaign, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press. p. 117. ISBN 978-0-8093-3770-5. OCLC 1112128335.
  13. ^ Forbes, Ella (1998). African American Women During the Civil War. Shrewsbury, Massachusetts: Garland Publishing. p. 197. ISBN 978-0-8153-3115-5.
  14. ^ Reed, Christopher R. (2001). "African American Life in Antebellum Chicago, 1833–1860". Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. 94 (4): 356–382. ISSN 1522-1067. JSTOR 40193583.
  15. ^ Hyman, Michael B. (February 1, 2015). "The man who ended Illinois' 'black laws': It's past due for the state to honor John Jones". Chicago Lawyer Magazine. Archived from the original on January 18, 2021. Retrieved January 18, 2021.
  16. ^ Guzman, Richard (2006). Guzman, Richard (ed.). Black writing from Chicago : in the world, not of it?. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press. p. 3. ISBN 0-8093-2703-1. OCLC 62324505.
  17. ^ Reed, Christopher Robert (2014). Knock at the Door of Opportunity: Black Migration to Chicago, 1900–1919. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press. p. 105. ISBN 978-0-8093-3334-9. OCLC 881417214.
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