Grace Morris Allen Jones (7 January 1876 – 2 March 1928)[1] was an African American educator, school founder, fundraiser, postmaster, clubwoman, reformer, and writer.

Grace married Laurence C. Jones in Iowa City in 1912,[10] becoming an Executive Secretary and teacher of English[8] at Piney Woods Country Life School.

[3] The two had met years earlier when Laurence Jones delivered a speech in an Iowan church, and later reconnected when he returned to the state.

[11] Jones recalled his first impression of Grace in Piney Woods and Its Story (1922), writing that he 'thought her the brightest and most enthusiastic little woman of my race that I had ever met.

Cooking, sewing, housekeeping, gardening, agriculture, carpentry, shoe mending, broom making, printing and laundrying are the industries.

We have 169 acres of land, three large buildings, seven smaller ones used for shops, barns, poultry house, live stock and industrial apparatus.

[3] As part of her efforts, Grace Jones started the Cotton Blossom Singers, who toured the country raising money for Piney Woods.

[3] Jones believed that the Cotton Blossoms would be valuable not only for fundraising, but for building on the pupils' innate talents and enabling them to see the country.

[17] An obituary in The Annals of Iowa wrote that she 'exerted an unusual influence for good during her very active career',[8] and Laurence C. Jones that 'to record... [her worth] would make a book in itself and then it would only be half-told, for it is too great to be fashioned into words.