[1] An interesting point of pride for the Jones family was that they claimed to be descendants of Sally Hemings, a slave on Thomas Jefferson's plantation.
[1] To pay tuition Jones worked and raised money from members of his local community who were supportive and wanted to see his artistic talent realized.
[1] This was not all together enough to pay for a full term at the Art Institute of Chicago, so Jones briefly worked as a busboy in Albany, NY.
[5] Jones did not complete his degree at the Art Institute of Chicago and left to teach painting at Dillard University in New Orleans in 1936.
Before leaving Dillard, Jones was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship to study at the famed Taller de Gráfica Popular in Mexico.
[1] At the Taller de Gráfica Popular in Mexico, Jones learned how to make woodcut and linocut prints and mingled with visiting artists like Diego Rivera and José Orozco.
[1] 1940 - Fellowship from the Rosenwald Fund to study printmaking at the Taller de Gráfica Popular 1963 - Jones's painting "Past, Present, Future" wins first honorable mention at the Atlanta University annual art show.
1964 - "Past, Present, Future" wins the Karl Douglas Trophy and second place painting at the Chicago Centennial Show of Black Progress.
Jones is also known to have painted murals in churches and other community buildings in locales where he lived, but the location and preservation of these works has not been fully recorded.