Thomas Jesse Jones

[1] Thomas Jesse Jones was born on 4 August 1873 in Llanfachraeth, a village in Wales.

In 1916 he completed the first federal study of black schools, and in 1917 became educational director of the Phelps Stokes Fund.

Du Bois noted Jones's activity in the Y.W.C.A., the Y.M.C.A., the Phelps-Stokes Fund, and even international missionary work like that of Max Yergan in South Africa.

Du Bois wasn't sure how he came to this practice, but: "The point is that he did come to the place where he definitely and persistently began to work so as to displace Negro leaders, and gather into his own hands such an amount of information and power as would gradually give him the position of arbiter and patron of the Negro race in America."

Du Bois was adamantly opposed: "we have no enmity against Mr. Jones and are not stopping to question his motives or purposes, as American Negroes, and as men, we propose to speak for ourselves and to be represented by spokesmen whom we elect; and whenever in any case this policy is contravened we are going to fight that decision in every civilized way, and to the last ditch.