Her parents bought a house on Martha's Vineyard, where Jones met those who influenced her life and art, such as sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller, composer Harry T. Burleigh, and novelist Dorothy West.

The director of the Boston Museum School refused to hire her, telling her to find a job in the South where "her people" lived.

[8]: 186  In 1928 she was hired by Charlotte Hawkins Brown after some initial reservations, and subsequently founded the art department at Palmer Memorial Institute, a historically black prep school, in Sedalia, North Carolina.

As a prep school teacher, she coached a basketball team, taught folk dancing, and played the piano for church services.

In 1930, she was recruited by James Vernon Herring to join the art department at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Jones remained as professor of design and watercolor painting until her retirement in 1977.

She began to exhibit her works with the William E. Harmon Foundation with a charcoal drawing of a student at the Palmer Memorial Institute, Negro Youth (1929).

Two paintings were accepted at the annual Salon de Printemps exhibition at the Société des Artists Français for her Parisian debut.

After she was granted an extension of her fellowship to travel to Italy, she returned to Howard University and taught watercolor painting classes.

[12] In 1941, Jones entered her painting Indian Shops Gay Head, Massachusetts into the Corcoran Gallery's annual competition.

[6] Jones' Les Fétiches was instrumental in transitioning "Négritude" — a distinctly francophone artistic phenomenon — from the predominantly literary realm into the visual.

Her work provided an important visual link to Négritude authors such as Aimé Césaire, Léon Damas, and Léopold Sédar Senghor.

In 1952, the book Loïs Mailou Jones: Peintures 1937–1951 was published, reproducing more than one hundred of her art pieces completed in France.

[7] At the Barnett-Aden Gallery, Jones exhibited with a group of prominent black artists, such as Jacob Lawrence and Alma Thomas.

"[23]: 27 Alain Locke, a philosophy professor at Howard University and founder of the Harlem Renaissance, encouraged Jones to paint her heritage.

[11]: 51  Other paintings that came out of Locke's encouragement were Dans un Café à Paris (Leigh Whipper), The Janitor and The Pink Table Cloth.

[11]: 51 Previously in 1934, Jones met Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noel, a prominent Haitian artist, while both were students at Columbia University.

[11]: 77 In 1954, Jones was a guest professor at Centre D'Art and Foyer des Arts Plastiques in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where the government invited her to paint Haitian people and landscapes.

In them her affinity for bright colors, her personal understanding of Cubism's basic principles, and her search for a distinct style reached an apogee.

[17] In the 1960s, she exhibited at School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Cornell University, and galleries in France, New York, and Washington, D.C.

[7] In 1968, she documented work and interviews of contemporary Haitian artists for Howard University's "The Black Visual Arts" research grant.

She documented and interviewed contemporary African artists in Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Nigeria, Dahomey (today known as Benin), Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Senegal.

While many Washington, D.C., artists did not paint to be political or create their own commentary on racial issues, Jones was greatly influenced by Africa and the Caribbean, which her art reflected.

[28] Jones's return to African themes in her work of the past several decades coincided with the black expressionistic movement in the United States during the 1960s.

Skillfully integrating aspects of African masks, figures, and textiles into her vibrant paintings, Jones became a link between the Harlem Renaissance movement into a contemporary expression of similar themes.

Despite her extensive portfolio, teaching career, and cultural work in other countries, she had been left out of the history books because she did not stick to typical subjects that were suitable for African Americans to paint.

[30] In 1994, The Corcoran Gallery of Art opened The World of Lois Mailou Jones exhibition with a public apology for their past racial discrimination.

The exhibition also featured the works of Barbara Chase-Riboud, Edward Clark, Harold B. Cousins [fr], Beauford Delaney, Herbert Gentry, and Larry Potter.

After her death, her friend and adviser, Dr. Chris Chapman completed a book entitled Lois Mailou Jones: A life in color about her life and the African-American pioneers she had worked with and been friends with, including Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Alain Locke, Dorothy West, Josephine Baker, and Matthew Henson.

[7] In 2006, Lois Mailou Jones: The Early Works: Paintings and Patterns 1927–1937 opened at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

[34] From November 14, 2009, to February 29, 2010, a retrospective exhibit of her work entitled Lois Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color was held at the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, North Carolina.