Scipio Africanus Jones - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Scipio Africanus Jones was an African-American educator, attorney, judge, philanthropist, and Republican politician from the state of Arkansas

Arkansas

Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...

. He was most famous for successfully guiding the appeals of the twelve men condemned to death after the Elaine Race Riots of 1919.

Scipio Africanus Jones was born in Smith Township, near Tulip in Dallas County, Arkansas.

Early life and education

Jones' mother, Jemmina Jones, was 15 years old when Jones was born. She was the former slave, and best friend, of 14-year-old Thresa Jones whose parents, Dr. Adolphus and Carolyn Jones, died when she was 9 years old. Scipio Jones' father was Dr. Sanford Reamey, Thresa's uncle.

Jones attended black schools near his hometown. In 1883 he moved to Little Rock

Little Rock, Arkansas

Little Rock is the capital and the largest city of the U.S. state of Arkansas. The Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 699,757 people in the 2010 census...

at the age of 20 and took preparatory courses at Philander Smith College

Philander Smith College

Philander Smith College is a private, historically black college that is affiliated with the United Methodist Church. It is located in Little Rock, Arkansas. The student body averages around 850 attendees, with around 30% of that figure attending part time. Although known historically as a school...

. Jones went on to earn a bachelor's degree from North Little Rock's Bethel University (now Shorter College

Shorter College (Arkansas)

Shorter College is a two-year, private, historically black liberal arts college located in North Little Rock, Arkansas. It was founded in 1886 by the African Methodist Episcopal Church....

) in 1885. He received an honorary doctorate degree from Morris Brown College

Morris Brown College

Morris Brown College is a private, coed, liberal arts college located in the Vine City community of Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is a historically black college affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church...

in Atlanta, Georgia

Atlanta, Georgia

Atlanta is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 census, Atlanta's population is 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest metropolitan area in...

in 1905.

Jones worked as a school teacher in Big Rock District Two from 1885 until 1887. He was a tenant of James Lawson, a white man, who was a prominent member of a pioneer family of Little Rock. It was at this time that he also befriended three prominent Black business owners: Ed Wood Sr., owner of the largest Black-owned plantation in the state; John Bush, a powerful Black merchant; and Chester Keatts.

One source Ovington (1927) claims Jones was denied admittance to the University of Arkansas School of Law

University of Arkansas School of Law

The University of Arkansas School of Law is the law school of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas, a state university. It has around 445 students enrolled in its Juris Doctor and Master of Law programs and is home to the federally-funded National Agricultural Law Center and the...

due to his race. However, the current law school did not exist until 1924. A year after Jones passed the Arkansas Bar in 1889, an earlier law school was founded; it was closed by 1913. Jones offered to work for free as a janitor at the law offices of U.S. District Judge Henry C. Caldwell, Judge T.B. Martin, and Atty. S.A. Kilgore. While there, he began to read law books during his free time. He also became an apprentice-in-law, reading law

Reading law

Reading law is the method by which persons in common law countries, particularly the United States, entered the legal profession before the advent of law schools. This usage specifically refers to a means of entering the profession . A small number of U.S...

under Circuit Judge Robert J. Lea.

Political life

Jones became a prominent black Republican in Arkansas

Arkansas

. He unsuccessfully ran for state representative in 1892, and was a delegate to the Republican National Convention

Republican National Convention

The Republican National Convention is the presidential nominating convention of the Republican Party of the United States. Convened by the Republican National Committee, the stated purpose of the convocation is to nominate an official candidate in an upcoming U.S...

several times. Jones was offered the positions of Recorder of Deeds in the District of Columbia and Ambassador to the Republic of Haiti, but declined both appointments to concentrate on local affairs.

Jones was deeply rooted in the struggle between the Lily Whites and the Black and Tans within the Republican Party. In 1902, Jones helped organize a slate of Negro Republicans to challenge the Lily Whites and Democrats in the Little Rock general election. The struggle reached a breaking point in 1920 when the Negroes took an unprecedented course of nominating a Negro candidate, J.H. Blount, for Governor. In that year, Jones was selected as the Black and Tan contender for the Arkansas Republican National Committee. Four years later, Jones, J. H. Blunt, N. R. Parker and J. Hibbler helped organize a Black and Tan protest meeting in Little Rock in which a list of demands for equal political treatment was presented to the Lily Whites. Eventually, a compromise was reached that guaranteed Negro representation on the State Republican Central Committee.

Business life

Jones was a successful and powerful businessman as well. He was the founder and owner of People's Ice & Fuel Company, which had the distinction of being both the only black-owned and black-operated ice manufacturing company and the only black-owned and black-operated fuel company in the U.S. He also founded the Arkansas Negro Business League, an affiliate of Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington

Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...

's National Negro Business League (NNBL). Additionally, he joined the Prince Hall Masons.
During the administration of Mayor Brickhouse, the Little Rock Clearing House, composed of
representatives from the ten banks of Little Rock, had declined to make a loan to the City of Little Rock. When the mayor mentioned this fact to Jones, he asked the mayor how much money the city needed. The mayor replied they needed $75,000, and Jones said, "My clients have $120,000 on deposit in the banks of Little Rock and if the Clearing House will not let you have the money, my clients will." After hearing about the conversation, the Clearing House agreed to lend the city the $75,000.

Practice of law

Jones was accepted into the American Bar Association

American Bar Association

The American Bar Association , founded August 21, 1878, is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. The ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of academic standards for law schools, and the formulation...

in 1889. Shortly thereafter, he was admitted to practice in the circuit court of Pulaski County (Little Rock

Little Rock, Arkansas

Little Rock is the capital and the largest city of the U.S. state of Arkansas. The Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 699,757 people in the 2010 census...

), Arkansas

Arkansas

. In 1900, he was admitted to the state Supreme Court, followed by the United States District Court

United States district court

The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...

(1901), the United States Supreme Court (1905), and the United State Court of Appeals (1914). He served as the first treasurer of the National Negro Bar Association when it was formed in Little Rock in 1910 as an auxiliary of the NNBL.

Jones was the National Attorney General of the Mosaic Templars of America. The Mosaic Templars, founded by John E. Bush and Chester W. Keatts, was, at the time, one of the largest African-American fraternal organizations in the nation, and one of the largest black-owned business enterprises. The organization provided burial and life insurance to members; operated a building and loan association, a newspaper, a nursing school, and a hospital; and offered other social programs to the community. Its international headquarters were located in Little Rock.

Jones also served as the attorney, counselor, and legal adviser for several other African-American fraternal organizations, including the International Order of Twelve, Knights and Daughters of Tabor, which also had its headquarters in Arkansas, just a few blocks from the Mosaic Templars. He successfully defended the Grand Lodge of the Knights of Pythias when the Arkansas Insurance Commission attempted to put them out of business. Because of his work with African-American fraternal organizations, he was called "the Gibraltar of Negro fraternal beneficiary societies."

In 1915, when Fred A. Isgrig was judge of the police court in Little Rock, Fred Isgrig disqualified himself in a case and City Attorney Harry C. Hale nominated Jones to act as judge. All the parties being Negroes and all the witnesses being Negroes and all the attorneys being Negroes, except Hale, he thought it proper to have a Negro judge preside at this particular trial. Jones was elected special judge. The election of a Negro to hold court so angered W. N. Lee, a white lawyer of Little Rock who was originally from Mississippi, that he engaged in a fisticuff with Hale for nominating Jones and declared he would not live in a state in which white people would elect a Negro. The trial was held about ten o'clock in the morning and Lee left the state about four o'clock that afternoon and never returned.

On August 26, 1924 the Pulaski County Democratic convention met in session. The meeting, packed with anti-Klan delegates who listened attentively to many verbal lashings of the secret fraternity, was the first at which a direct attack was ever made by the Democratic party in the county against the Klan. Scathing denunciations of the order were made by the chairman of the convention, Fred A. Isgrig, and the secretary of the County Central Committee, Frank H. Dodge. These were both received with applause. Isgrig traced the history of the Little Rock Klan in politics, describing the fight it had made to obtain control of the school board, the county offices, and the membership of the state legislature alloted to the district.
He pointed out further that the election judges and clerks were chosen with the assistance of Klansmen, including C. P. Newton, the Democratic candidate for county judge.

Before adjourning, the convention adopted a resolution, the conclusion of which stated: "Be it ... resolved that we call upon the citizens not only of this county but upon all the counties of the state of Arkansas, to join with us in casting the Ku Klux Klan out of the Democratic party and forcing it to come out in the open, under its own colors as a Ku Klux Klan party, instead of seeking to hide its identity within the folds of the Democratic party."

In 1924, Jones was also elected special chancellor in the Pulaski County Chancery Court.

Jones was the first lawyer in Arkansas to raise the question that Negro persons had not been permitted to serve on the grand and petit juries, although many were qualified. He contended that this was discrimination on account of race, color, and previous condition of servitude. Jones raised this question before it was raised in the Carter case of Texas, which was afterwards appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

. The Supreme Court held that it was a discrimination on account of race, color, and previous condition of servitude. Many cases were dismissed in Texas in which indictments had been made without Negro persons being on the jury.

Following the Adair case in Georgia, many suits of injunction were brought in other states against the Negro Shriners

Shriners

The Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, also commonly known as Shriners and abbreviated A.A.O.N.M.S., established in 1870, is an appendant body to Freemasonry, based in the United States...

, attempting to prohibit them from using the name and paraphernalia of Shriners. Jones represented the Negro Shriners in such a suit brought in Pulaski County, Arkansas, and Chancellor Judge John Martineau held in his favor. Jones also assisted in the trial of the case at Houston, Texas, against the Negro Shriners. The white Shrine Temple had sold its paraphernalia to the Negro Shrine Temple, and then enjoined the Negro Shriners from using the paraphernalia. This case was carried to the Supreme Court where it ruled that the Negroes had the right to use the paraphernalia on the ground of "estoppel".

The Elaine Twelve

Jones is most famous for his skillful defense of the Elaine 12, twelve black sharecroppers sentenced to death for participation in the Elaine Race Riot

Elaine Race Riot

The Elaine Race Riot, also called the Elaine Massacre, occurred September 30, 1919 in the town of Elaine in Phillips County, Arkansas, in the Arkansas Delta, where sharecropping by African American farmers was prevalent on plantations of white landowners.Approximately 100 African American farmers,...

in 1919. The twelve men had been sentenced to death by an all-white jury in a series of trials that were said to have lasted approximately 20 minutes.

The plight of the Elaine 12, and 87 other black men who were convicted to prison terms for participation in the riot, quickly made international headlines. Three organizations offered assistance: the Arkansas Conference on Negro Organizations (ACNO), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...

(NAACP), and the National Equal Rights League

National Equal Rights League

The National Equal Rights League is the oldest nationwide human rights organization dedicated to the liberation of black people in the United States...

(NERL

Nerl

Nerl may refer to:*Nerl , an urban-type settlement in Ivanovo Oblast, RussiaThe acronym NERL can refer to:* National Equal Rights League, oldest American organization dedicated to black liberation...

). The ACNO and NERL joined together to hire Jones as the defense attorney for all 99 of the convicted men. The NAACP hired former state attorney general George W. Murphy as the defense attorney for only the Elaine 12. The two attorneys were friends and decided to work together.

When Murphy died unexpectedly, Jones took the lead in guiding the appeals process. After much internal debate, the NAACP temporarily retained Jones as their replacement for Murphy, making him briefly the sole attorney for all of the 99 defendants. He successfully saw the Elaine 12 case to the Supreme Court of the United States

Supreme Court of the United States

and is credited with having been the author of the brief used before the Court.

When it was time to argue the Elaine 12 case before the Supreme Court, the NAACP decided to replace Jones with Moorfield Storey

Moorfield Storey

Moorfield Storey was an American lawyer, publicist, and civil rights leader. According to Storey's biographer, William B...

and former assistant U.S. attorney Ulyssess S. Bratton. It was Jones' efforts that led to the landmark Supreme Court Moore v. Dempsey
Moore v. Dempsey
Moore et al. v. Dempsey, , was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled 6-2 that the defendants' mob-dominated trials deprived them of due process guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and reversed the district court's decision declining the...

ruling that, for the first time, permitted collateral attack through habeas corpus

Habeas corpus

is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...

on a state appellate court decision.

During the trials, Jones received frequent lynching threats and was said to have shifted his location each night to avoid those who wanted the Elaine 12 defendants convicted at any cost.

New trials were granted to the twelve defendants as the court stated that they had not received due process

Due process

Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...

in the original trials.

Charges were quickly dismissed against six of the defendants. The remaining six were retried, convicted and sentenced to twelve years in prison. Jones successfully lobbied Arkansas Governor Thomas McRae, who had earlier refused to release the defendants, to let men out on indefinite furloughs in 1925 just hours before Governor-Elect Thomas Terral assumed office.

This was important because Terral was a member of the Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...

(KKK). During a speech before one of the largest KKK rallies in Arkansas history the night before his inauguration, Terral vowed to execute the remaining Elaine 12 defendants as his first official duty in office.

Before leaving office, Governor McRae also pardoned the other 87 Elaine defendants.

Later in Life

Jones remained active in Republican politics and continued to press cases dealing with racial discrimination in Arkansas until his death. During World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, Jones led the Liberty Bond

Liberty bond

A Liberty Bond was a war bond that was sold in the United States to support the allied cause in World War I. Subscribing to the bonds became a symbol of patriotic duty in the United States and introduced the idea of financial securities to many citizens for the first time. The Act of Congress which...

recruitment drive among the African-American community in Arkansas and raised $243,000 in the effort. Jones also served as the head of the Negro State Suffrage League and fought for voting rights for black citizens throughout his life. Jones also served as director of the United Charities drive, which was a predecessor of the United Way of America.

Jones's last case was in 1942 when he teamed up with Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...

to sue the Little Rock School District to obtain equal pay for a black school teacher. Though Jones died before the completion of the case, it proved to be successful.

Scipio Jones died in Little Rock, Arkansas on 2 March 1943 and was buried at Haven of Rest Cemetery.

Early life and education

Political life

Business life

Practice of law

The Elaine Twelve

Later in Life

External links

Further reading