Scipio Africanus Jones - Early Life and Education

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 at the age of 20 and took preparatory courses at Philander Smith College. Jones went on to earn a bachelor's degree from North Little Rock's Bethel University (now Shorter College) in 1885. He received an honorary doctorate degree from Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia 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 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 under Circuit Judge Robert J. Lea.

Read more about this topic:  Scipio Africanus Jones

Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or education:

    ... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.
    George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)

    The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    We attempt to remember our collective American childhood, the way it was, but what we often remember is a combination of real past, pieces reshaped by bitterness and love, and, of course, the video past—the portrayals of family life on such television programs as “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” and all the rest.
    Richard Louv (20th century)

    Casting an eye on the education of children, from whence I can make a judgment of my own, I observe they are instructed in religious matters before they can reason about them, and consequently that all such instruction is nothing else but filling the tender mind of a child with prejudices.
    George Berkeley (1685–1753)