Mary Jane Richardson Jones
American abolitionist, suffragist, and activist (1819–1909)
Mary Jane Richardson Jones (c. 1819 – December 26, 1909) was an American abolitionist, philanthropist, and suffragist. Born in Tennessee to parents who were free African-Americans, Jones and her family moved to Illinois. With her husband, John, she was a leading African-American figure in the early history of Chicago. The Jones household was a stop on the Underground Railroad and a center of abolitionist activity in the pre-Civil War era, helping hundreds of fugitive slaves flee slavery.
After her husband's death in 1879, Jones continued to support African-American civil rights and advancement in Chicago, and became a suffragist. Jones was active in the women's club movement and mentored a new generation of younger black leaders, such as Fannie Barrier Williams and Ida B. Wells. Historian Wanda A. Hendricks has described her as a wealthy "aristocratic matriarch, presiding over the [city's] black elite for two decades."
Early life
Mary Jane Richardson was born in 1819 in Memphis, Tennessee, to a free black family; her parents were Elijah and Diza Richardson. Her father was a blacksmith, and her mother was a homemaker. Richardson was one of the middle children among nine born to the Richardsons between 1810 and 1845.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mary Jane Richardson Jones” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.