Scipio Africanus Jones - Practice of Law

Practice of Law

Jones was accepted into the American Bar Association in 1889. Shortly thereafter, he was admitted to practice in the circuit court of Pulaski County (Little Rock), Arkansas. In 1900, he was admitted to the state Supreme Court, followed by the United States District Court (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. 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, 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".