Mary Jane Richardson Jones

Mary Jane Richardson Jones
Jones c. 1865
Born	Mary Jane Richardson c. 1819 Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
Died	December 26, 1909(1909-12-26) (aged 89–90) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation	Activist
Movement	Abolitionism woman's club movement
Spouse	John Jones ​ ​ (m. 1841; died 1879)​
Children	1

Mary Jane Richardson Jones (c. 1819 – December 26, 1909) was an American abolitionist, philanthropist, and suffragist. Born in Tennessee to free African-American parents, 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."^[1]