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Today: The generation-spanning impact of Mary Richardson Jones. Mrs. Jones was born free in Tennessee in 1820. About 15 yrs later, the Tenn. legislature prohibited Black men from voting, & Mary's father decided to move the family to Illinois. @CCP_org #IllinoisBlackConventions 
The Richardsons migrated to Alton.
Mary married John Jones in 1841, & they soon moved to Chicago. They opened their home to freedom-seekers. They collaborated with John Brown. During the Civil War, Mary was pres. of the Colored Ladies’ Freedmen’s Aid Society of Chicago.
Mary married John Jones in 1841, & they soon moved to Chicago. They opened their home to freedom-seekers. They collaborated with John Brown. During the Civil War, Mary was pres. of the Colored Ladies’ Freedmen’s Aid Society of Chicago.
The Colored Ladies' Freedmen's Aid Soc. solicited donations to help people escaping from slavery and to support Black soldiers and their families. Mary Ann Shadd Cary was one of their agents! Mary R. Jones remained prominent in Black Chicago long after her husband died in 1879.
Henry Brown of Springfield, Illinois, is best known to history as the Black man who led Lincoln's horse on the day of Lincoln's funeral. But Henry Brown was much more than that.... #presidentsday @CCP_org @ALPLM @illinoisIHLC @HopeCM @NWIHistorian @nu_hgso #BHM
Born in North Carolina in 1823, Brown left home as a young person and migrated to Ohio and Ind. before settling in Ill. He and Mary Ann King fell in love in 1847. "A mutual admiration and a matrimonial engagement was the result of their first meeting," a county history recorded.
An A.M.E. minister, Henry Brown presided over a church in Springfield but frequently traveled to other churches. He and Mary Ann had ten children together. Brown served as a delegate to the first statewide Black political convention: Chicago, Oct. 1853. coloredconventions.org/black-illinois…
