Mary Magdalene Rice was born on March 2, 1875, in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

[2] She was the illegitimate daughter of former slave Malinda Rice and a former Confederate general, John R. Jones.

His widow served as president immediately following her husband's death through 1908 when James Robert Lincoln Diggs took over.

[3] She was active in the Montclair chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1920s through the 1930s.

[2] Her daughter, Carrie Allen McCray, wrote a biography of her mother entitled Freedom's Child: The Life of a Confederate General's Black Daughter, which was published by Algonquin Books in 1998.