Scipio A. Jones portrait unveiling: An American Hero!
February 21-27, 2022
By Wesley Brown
After years in the making, the highly anticipated unveiling of the life-size portrait of Scipio A. Jones will take place Thursday (Feb. 24) at the downtown post office in Little Rock that bears his name.
According to a spokesman for U.S. Rep. French Hill, R-Little Rock, the unveiling will take place at 10 a.m. at the Scipio Jones Post Office at 1700 Main Street. Not seen yet by the public, the portrait of Jones will symbolize the famed civil rights attorney walking out of the federal courthouse after his landmark Supreme Court case tied to the Elaine Massacre of 1919.
The portrait was painted by Arkansas artist Wade Hampton, and was facilitated by Hearne Fine Art, local law firm Gills, Ragon, Owen PA, and the Central Arkansas Library System. Under the federal law sponsored by Rep. French Hill, R-Little Rock, and signed into law in December 2020, more than $50,000 for the portrait were raised privately and no taxpayer dollars were spent on the artwork.
Rep. Hill first introduced legislation to allow a full-sized portrait of Jones to be on display at the post office that bears his name in 2019 after the Arkansas legislature passed a bill to name the post office located at 1700 Main St. in Little Rock after Jones.
Today, a plaque at the post office bears Jones’ name, but post office regulations restrict the items that can be placed on display, including a portrait of the post office’s namesake. Hill’s bill permits the postmaster of the downtown Scipio A. Jones Post Office the one-time authority to accept and display the civil rights icon’s portrait in the lobby of the downtown facility.
“Here in Arkansas, we are deeply proud of Scipio Jones and his important contributions to our state, and to our nation, as a civil rights icon and lawyer. In the wake of the Elaine Race Massacre in 1919, Mr. Jones bravely and successfully defended twelve African American sharecroppers who had been wrongfully charged in connection to a crime they didn’t commit and placed on death row,” Rep. Hill said after H.R. 3317 was signed into law on Dec. 4, 2020. “I am pleased that my bill, the Scipio Jones Post Office Portrait Act, finally has been signed into law to allow current and future generations to appreciate fully Mr. Jones’s critical role in shaping Arkansas’s history and the fight for equality.”
Named after a Roman general, Scipio Africanus Jones was born near the small community of Tulip, Arkansas, in Dallas County. Driven to succeed, Jones attended Walden Seminary (now Philander Smith College) and then attended Bethel Institute (now Shorter College), earning his bachelor’s degree in 1885. In 1889, Jones passed the bar and was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of Arkansas in 1900 and by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1905.
After the Elaine Massacre of 1919, he defended 12 wrongly accused Black men, the Elaine 12, who had been charged with murder and condemned to death by all-white juries. With his clients already facing execution, Jones fought their convictions in both state and federal courts.
An appeal was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that the accused had been denied due process of law. After reviewing the case, the Supreme Court agreed and overturned the convictions. Moore v. Dempsey changed the nature of the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. The precedent-setting ruling allowed federal courts to hear and examine evidence in state criminal cases to ensure that the defendants’ constitutional rights were protected. It was a landmark ruling that sought to ensure that those accused of a crime had received due process.
An American hero
John Gill, a long-time shareholder and director at Gill Ragon Owen, told The Daily Record that the idea to commemorate Jones by creating a post office mural happened after he completed his book, “Post Masters: Arkansas Post Office Art in the New Deal,” nearly 20 years ago.
“The idea came to me that the post office has Scipio Jones name on it, but if you go (inside) you have no idea who he was or why he is named for it,” said Gill, who earned degrees in history and law from Vanderbilt University.
The longtime trial attorney and former president of the Arkansas Bar Association said that led him to do more research on Jones. He said earlier in his career he actually wrote about the Moore v. Dempsey ruling in another book he authored called “On the Courthouse Square in Arkansas: Top Ten Cases in Arkansas History.”
“So, I had known a lot about the case and not known all that much about Scipio Jones frankly until I started digging into his life and I was intrigued by it,” Gill recalled. “He certainly in mind is an American hero. (He) turned the law around to do what the 14th Amendment intended to be done decades earlier. It was a stroke of genius actually, and that kind of got me started but it was not easy to get a mural in the post office.”
Gill acknowledged that the portrait unveiling comes at a time where there is renewed interest locally and nationally concerning Jones’ legal exploits, although he couldn’t cite the reason. In October, a grant in the amount of $3,500 was awarded to the Dunbar/Horace Mann Archives Building Project Foundation for developing a book or brochure about the Little Rock attorney, educator, judge, philanthropist and politician.
On Feb. 19, days ahead of the portrait unveiling, the Dunbar Historic Neighborhood Association, Dunbar/Horace Mann Archive Development Foundation, and The Descendants of the Elaine Massacre are planning a presentation about Jones at the downtown Sue Cowan Williams library. The event will focus on why Jones is relevant to the Elaine Massacre and offer details of ongoing efforts to renovate his former home on Cross Street in the Dunbar Historic District.
“The (Feb. 19) date is significant because this is also the date the Moore v. Dempsey ruling came down from the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Garbo Hearne, the local owner of the Black-owned art gallery and bookstore that housed the portrait by Hampton.
The Dunbar/Horace Mann Foundation is working to restore Jones’ home at 1872 S. Cross St. in Little Rock with the goal of using the building to house memorabilia from these historic Black schools and Jones’ career, including his work guiding appeals of the 12 African American men condemned to death after the Elaine Massacre.
Also in December, Emmy award-winning actor Sterling K. Brown announced he will soon portray the famous civil right icon and bring his story to the movie screen. According to a Nov. 17 story by Hollywood entertainment news blog Deadline, Searchlight Pictures has snapped up E. Nicholas Mariani’s 2018 Blacklist script The Defender, which George Tillman Jr. will direct with three-time Emmy-winning Brown starring as the heroic lawyer in post-slavery Arkansas.
Brown will produce the upcoming movie with 21 Laps’ Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen. Mariani and Danielle Reardon will executive produce with Dantram Nguyen, Katie Goodson-Thomas and Richard Ruiz overseeing for Searchlight. Ben Wilkinson, VP Business Affairs and Legal Counsel, negotiated the deal for Searchlight along with WME and CAA on behalf of filmmakers.
Photo Caption:
After the Elaine Massacre of 1919, Jones defended 12 wrongly accused Black men who had been charged with murder and condemned to death by all-white juries. An appeal was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that the accused had been denied due process of law. After reviewing the landmark case, the Supreme Court agreed and overturned the convictions.
