Jones' father, Ralph Herbert Stanton, was a manager at the Standard Life Insurance Company.

Jones grew up in a highly segregated St. Louis neighborhood, but she was not daunted by the assumed, implicit Jim Crow laws; she instead regarded her young life to be privileged with all her primary mentors being African American.

This position would still provide a high standard of living for African Americans at that time because the income gap between white and black teachers was only slight.

She transferred to Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, where she majored in English and History and decided to become a librarian instead of a teacher.

Jones remained in that position until her graduation; she received her Bachelor of Arts in 1934 from Spelman and a degree in Library Science in 1938 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

[7] The Council of the American Library Association passed a "Resolution on Racism and Sexism Awareness" during the ALA's Centennial Conference in Chicago, July 18–24, 1976.

Her response was published in American Libraries, the official publication of the ALA. Jones opposed the IFC's proposal, declaring that the resolution required further adjustments and amendments to the language before the committee considered annulment.

The ALA made the decision to deliberate the fate of the resolution and report its results at the 1977 Detroit conference.

Jones viewed the resolution as the framework, and not the final solution, for enabling librarians to confront issues that hampered "human freedom".