His vast financial success—‌analyzed further in Booker T. Washington's The Negro in Business (1907)—‌was utilized to help combat racism by providing economic opportunities for other black Americans.

[1] Junius was the third of seven children, three brothers (Peter, James and Robert) and three sisters (Catharine, Amanda and Virginia).

After emancipation, his father died, and his mother remarried to another farmer and former slave Henry Cox, and resulted in the birth of another brother Walker.

Junius received some public schooling three months out of the year, but taught himself to read, write, and understand mathematics.

[2] As a freedman, with just 90 cents to his name, Groves ventured to Edwardsville, Kansas, during the Exodus of 1879, he married Matilda E. Stewart in 1880.

After working as a sharecropper, Groves began purchasing farmland in 1884; by 1905, his holdings included about 500 acres.

[5] His other financial ventures included owning and operating a general goods store in Edwardsville, stock in mines in Indian Territory and New Mexico, and stock in Kansas banks; he also founded or co-founded the Negro Business League, the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, the Kaw Valley Potato Association, and the Sunflower State Agricultural Association.

[2] His superior methods led to the production of 721,500 bushels of the crop in a single year, out-producing anyone else in the world to that point.

[2] His worth was estimated at $80,000 in 1904 and at $300,000 in 1915; he is considered one of the most prosperous black Americans of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

[5] At the height of his success, he had constructed a 22-room mansion equipped with the latest comforts of the era.

His funeral, one local newspaper reported, was the "largest ever in Edwardsville"; he is thought to be buried in Groves Cemetery, near the community center he founded.

[3] Junius Groves married Matilda Stewart in Jackson County, Missouri, on May 9, 1880.

A notable descendant of Junius Groves include American basketball player Trent Lockett.