Kate Masur Profile picture
Feb 22, 2022 8 tweets 5 min read Read on X
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 Image
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. Image
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.
Mrs. Jones worked with Fannie Barrier Williams (pic), who was 35 years her junior, to lead women of the Prudence Crandall Literary Club. Focused on challenges facing Black women and girls, Jones said in 1888: “We want more justice to women...and more virtue among men.” Image
Jones drew the attention of Ida B. Wells, who arrived in Chi. in 1893. Wells made Jones "honorary" chair of a successful new Black women's club that enrolled “the most prominent women in church and secret society, school teachers and housewives and high-school girls.”
Mary R. Jones lived to see the formation of the National Association of Colored Women (1896) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909). When she died in 1909, the Chi. Defender declared she had been “loved and admired by every one.” Image
The @CCP_org "affirms Black women’s centrality to nineteenth-century Black organizing," and we've sought to deliver on the CCP's "pledge to account for Black women’s labor & leadership in our own historical work and in our own project practices." coloredconventions.org/about/principl…

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More from @katemasur

Jul 9, 2023
It’s great to see our historians’ brief cited by @AdamSerwer, an ace communicator about history. Wanted to add a few thoughts addressing recent convos about historians/courts/amici/etc. @rachelshelden @jdmortenson @TeraWHunter @Stephen_A_West and others. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Getting the brief underway, I was pretty certain, based on decades of work as an historian of Reconstruction, that people who supported the 14th Amend. in the 1860s would NOT have unequivocally rejected ameliorative race-conscious policies. supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/2…
Still, we had to look anew @ the evidence & alt claims. Working w/talented team @CooleyLLP, Greg Downs and I resolved that nothing would go in the brief that we thought historically inaccurate or even slightly exaggerated. Integrity really mattered, as @JRakove reflected earlier.
Read 14 tweets
Oct 31, 2022
Out of the gate, Strawbridge: "racial classifications are wrong" and violate the 14th A. This is precisely what the framers of the amendment did not believe. A distortion of history. #affirmativeaction
Let no one be taken in by this totally ahistorical claim. These folks know history is not on their side. That's why the Meese brief flat-out misrepresented the Civil Rights Act of 1866. supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/2…
Prelogar: Powerful evidence of laws, at time of 14A, that took race into account to bring African Americans to a point of equality. Petitioner has come forward with ESSENTIALLY NO HISTORY to support "colorblind" idea of the Constitution. Thank you.
Read 11 tweets
Oct 31, 2022
I'll be closely following today's #affirmativeaction arguments in SCOTUS. While recent coverage has focused on court's legitimacy and arguments over the meaning of Brown, much of the argument comes back, as @kenji_yoshino says here to the 14th Amendment. nytimes.com/2022/10/30/us/…
"This has always been the crux of the affirmative action debate. Does the 14th A’s equal protection clause forbid racial classification itself or only racial classification that entrenches historical subordination?”
If you care what the amendment's framers thought, the evidence is clear: the equal protection clause does not forbid racial classification itself. Historians and legal scholars put that evidence into the record in this brief: supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/2…
Read 5 tweets
Mar 18, 2022
Gratified that @WeinbergCollege highlighted our web exhibit, BLACK ORGANIZING IN PRE-CIVIL WAR ILLINOIS, for women's history month. We researched & wrote abt some remarkable Black women; the @CCP_org has been generative for thinking abt women's history. news.weinberg.northwestern.edu/2022/03/18/how…
Among the women we highlight is Mary E. Mann, who in 1863 became Chicago's first Black public h.s. graduate and went on to be the city's first black principal. Bio here (unfortunately we didn't find a pic of her) coloredconventions.org/black-illinois…
Some white Chicagoans tried to stand in Mary Mann's way, but she prevailed with support from others, inc. Republican John Wentworth. That story, and other stories of struggle over race and segregation in 1860s Chicago, are here:coloredconventions.org/black-illinois…
Read 6 tweets
Feb 21, 2022
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…
Read 5 tweets

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