Annette Jones

Annette Jones was born in Albany, Georgia and at a young age understood the humiliation of African Americans when she went on a shopping trip with her mother in downtown Albany. It seems, she grew into her rebellious attitude early, especially when she refused to leave a “Whites Only” table at the Arctic Bear in 1959 with two other girls. This incident and others were what fueled her passion to fight Jim Crow when SNCC reached Albany State’s campus. Jones was a leader that would become Miss Albany State in the fall of 1961. Freshly crowned, she would have to decide between her scholarship and title or becoming a civil rights activist. She chose to help end segregation in Albany. After participating in marches, mass meetings, being jailed, and being a leader among students in the movement, she was suspended and later expelled and lost her scholarship, volunteer job in the English Department, and crown. Such adversity would not slow Jone's work as an activist. Dean Irene Asbury Wright helped secure admission for Jones and others at Spelman College where she continued her work in Albany in the Spring of 1962 by commuting on weekends and holidays to support SNCC. In the summer of 1962 she worked fearlessly canvassing for voter registration and worked in the citizenship school, having taken a semester off from Spelman until December 1963. To this day, though the movement has ended, she can be found writing her poetry and giving presentations at different schools throughout Georgia about the movement.   Jones says she devoted her life, after the movement, to early childhood education because she believes it is by reaching young children, before the world jades their perspectives, that racism can be eradicated.  So, she worked for almost two decades training the youth of Georgia to judge others by their character and not their race at Spelman's Marion Wright Edelman Child Development Center.  Recently, in the fall of 2010, Albany State restored her crown and title and the honor she was due for her efforts fifty years ago.
 

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