Freedom with the Joneses

John and Mary Richardson Jones arrived in Illinois in 1844 and found a wide range of laws which restricted the freedoms of African American residents. The couple worked tirelessly in Chicago during the late 1840s and 1850s against slavery and the Illinois Black Laws. A few years after the abolition of slavery and the end of the Black Laws in 1865, John Jones was elected a Cook County commissioner and fought segregation in public schools.

In 1955, their granddaughter Theodora Purnell described Mary Jones's role:

She was mistress of the home where Nathan Freer, John Brown, Frederick Douglass and Allen Pinkerton visited. She harbored and fed the fugitive slaves that these men brought to her door as a refuge until they could be transported to Canada. In fact she stood at my Grand-father's side—her husband John Jones—when their early Chicago home became one of the Underground Railway Stations. It was she who stood guard at the door when these pioneer abolitionists were in conference.

Abolitionist John Brown stayed at the Joneses’ house in 1859 when he passed through Chicago on his way to his infamous raid at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

The Joneses home located at the southwest corner of W. 9th St. and S. Plymouth Ct. was designated a historical landmark on May 26, 2004.

After the Civil War, the Joneses worked to overturn racial segregation in Chicago and Illinois

Mary Richardson Jones was a pioneer in the initial Suffrage Movement and was hostess to Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chatman Catt, Emma Chandler and Mrs. John Brown.

Letter by Theodora Lee Purnell, September 2, 1955. John Jones Collection, Chicago Historical Society