Edward Smyth Jones

[2] Having left Louisville for Indianapolis, Jones set out on foot (and occasionally hopping freight trains) in the summer of 1910 for Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[1] "Arriving travel-worn, friendless, moneyless, hungry, he was preparing to bivouac on the Harvard campus his first night in the University city, when, being misunderstood, and not believed, he was apprehended as a vagabond and thrown into jail.

"[3] Jones presented documentation attesting to his character, as well as his poem "Ode to Ethiopia" to arraigning judge Arthur P. Stone, and this, combined with help from the Black lawyer Clement G. Morgan and educator William H. Holtzclaw, was enough to eventually secure his release from jail.

[2] His poem "A Song of Thanks" was included in the landmark 1922 compilation The Book of American Negro Poetry,[6] edited by James Weldon Johnson.

[7][8] More recent evaluations of his work liken him to British Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth[8] and explore how his reference to Dante in "Harvard Square" serves as an allegory for the African American experience in the early 20th century.