May 1, 1928

Dallas County native Scipio Africanus Jones was chosen as a delegate from Arkansas to the Republican National Convention. He also served in this position in 1940. In 1930, Jones was among a group of African-American lawyers who sued (unsuccessfully) the Democratic Party in Arkansas to reverse rules that prevented black citizens from voting in the Democratic state primary elections. As a prominent Little Rock (Pulaski County) attorney and one of the city’s leading black citizens at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first decades of the twentieth century, Jones is most significantly remembered for his role defending twelve men sentenced to death following the Elaine Massacre of 1919.