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1. From Richmond to Ithaca May the true spirit of fraternity rule our hearts, guide our thoughts, and control our lives, so that we may become, through thee, servants of all. —Alpha Phi Alpha, Fraternity Prayer Eugene Kinckle Jones was born on July 30, 1885, to Joseph Endom Jones (1850–1922) and Rosa Daniel Kinckle Jones (1857–1931) of Richmond, Virginia. His parents were natives of Lynchburg, Virginia. Joseph Jones was born a slave in 1850.1 The Jones family traces its lineage to Sicily Jones, the slave of Maurice Langhorne. The Langhornes were longtime Virginia aristocrats .2 An invalid Confederate soldier taught Joseph Endom Jones to read and write during the Civil War. Joseph Jones left Lynchburg for Richmond after the war, where he enrolled in Virginia Union University (formerly the Richmond Institute, sometimes referred to as Richmond Theological Seminary). The site had served as Lumpkin’s jail, where Union prisoners were incarcerated; ironically, it was originally the location of Robert Lumpkin’s slaveholding pens. The structure was “a two-story brick house with barred windows, located in the heart of Richmond’s famous slave market”—considered by local blacks as “the Devil’s Half Acre.”3 Many black men and women saw Richmond as a symbol of the North’s victory. At the end of March 1865, as the northern armies were surging toward Richmond and Petersburg, the final crumbling strongholds of southern resistance, black Union troops were viewed prominently in the moving lines of men.4 Joseph Jones remained in Richmond until 1869, when a Norwich, Connecticut , bookbinder who was touring the South encouraged and supported his educational aspirations. He was sent by the bookbinder to Hamilton, New York, to be enrolled at Hamilton Academy. By 1876, Joseph Jones had completed studies in theology at Colgate University (formerly Hamilton Academy) with the help of northern white supporters. Joseph Jones returned to Richmond, the former capitol of the Confederacy, prepared to assist in the enormous work of educating the recently freed black population, conducted by liberal whites and progressive blacks.5 Second to only Washington, D.C., Richmond served as a hub of educational activity through the Freedman’s Bureau and the American Baptist Home Mission Society.6 Unfortunately for Joseph Jones, he returned to Richmond at a time of unstable race relations. By 1876, white southerners were claiming redemption over congressional Reconstruction, and African Americans were reduced to second-class citizenship . Blacks in Richmond endured the same fate. Rosa Daniel Kinckle Jones was born of free lineage in Lynchburg. Rosa’s father, John Kinckle, had purchased his freedom, but her mother, Rachel Smith Kinckle, was born to a slave mother and her mother’s white master. The master willed at his death that young Rachel be set free when she found a free African American man to marry. He also stipulated that she be given five hundred dollars. John Kinckle seemed a likely suitor. Though a former slave, he experienced an interesting career in the city of Lynchburg. Through “sacrifices , hard work, and self-confidence he gained the monopoly of the express business in his home city.”7 John Kinckle was a porter and baggage handler at the railroad depot in Lynchburg.8 The city offered more opportunity for personal and material success than southern locales with a smaller black population . “Between 1860 and 1870, census statistics confirmed what the white South had already strongly suspected—a striking increase in the black urban population. . . . Three of Virginia’s principal cities—Richmond, Norfolk, and Lynchburg—now had nearly as many blacks as whites,” which encouraged many blacks to take their chances at economic success there.9 Richmond was the likely place of migration for most blacks leaving Lynchburg. Lynchburg was linked to Richmond through the James River and Kanawha Canal (see map 1). By 1860, the railroad had become the most sophisticated means of travel between the two cities.10 The historian Peter Rachleff concludes, “There were many reasons for coming to the capital. Some [blacks] saw immigration as a celebration of freedom. Black men with skills or particular aspirations might pick Richmond as the site of greater opportunity than existed in the rural areas and small towns.”11 The Kinckle and Jones families’ experiences paralleled that described by Robert Francis Engs in Freedom’s First Generation : Black Hampton, Virginia, 1861–1890. Engs states: “Even in political and economic defeat, black Hampton’s first free generation could look with pride at its major achievement: its children. They were...

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