Ida E. Jones

Ida E. Jones is the university archivist at Morgan State University. She became intrigued with Victorine Adams during Morgan's sesquicentennial celebration in 2017. She concluded that the history of African American Baltimore and to a large extent, Maryland, have some kind of Morgan connection with organizations and individuals. She is a consummate scholar who believes deeply in the words of Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune, who stated, "Power must walk hand in hand with humility and the intellect must have a soul." [from Baltimore Civil Rights Leader Victorine Q. Adams (2019)]

Ida E. Jones is an American historian and author who is the first University Archivist at Morgan State University. Previously she worked as Assistant Curator of Manuscripts at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University where as part of her work she created a Guide to Resources on Africa. Jones is a life member of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History where she served on the Executive Council and helped the organization revive their newsletter Negro History Bulletin before it became Black History Bulletin.

Her work has focused on DC-area African American history, letting the voices and lived experiences of people tell their stories. Her job working as an archivist gives her access to primary source material that has used for her books. She has said, about the relationship of her day job to her writing, "My Bruce Wayne is a in a special collection working as an assistant curator. My Batman is writing." She describes her work in archives as "tactile time travel." Her research has filled in the gaps about our knowledge of well known Black people in history including Frederick Douglass and Mary McLeod Bethune. [adapted from: Wikipedia]