About Dr. Mack Henry Jones
Early Life, Education, & Political Experiences
Mack Henry Jones was born January 13, 1937 to Reverend Clifton Jones, Sr. and Willie Mae Jones in Oakdale, a small sawmill town located in Allen Parish, south Louisiana. The fourth child of ten children, Mack and his sibling were raised in a loving family with parents who instilled a strong sense of self-identity, racial pride, and educational achievement. The leadership qualities and activism of Mack are directly attributed to his father’s fearless challenges to injustices he faced in a segregated society and his mother’s determined lessons about the value of education. Rev. Jones, a laborer, AME minister, and union organizer, integrated the labor movement in Oakdale and is described by Mack as “a race man and the reason why “all my life I was interested in giving white people a hard time.” Educated in the Oakdale segregated public school system, Mack and all his siblings obtained a high school diploma and advanced degrees, to the pride of their parents.
Mack Henry Jones, after completing high school, served in the U.S. Army from 1954-1957. In 1958, he entered Southern University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana with a desire to major in journalism but since the major did not exit, political science became his second choice. His dream to be a journalist was not achieved but his desire to write was realized as a political scientist. It was at Southern that Mack Jones was introduced to young, Black political scientists who taught him both a traditional and different perspective of the discipline. He also developed lifelong relationships with Jewel Limar Prestage, Rodney Higgins (Department Chair), Twiley Barker and Adolph Reed, Sr., and many others. Southern University was also the site of Mack Jones’ activism, as he led students in a sit-in demonstration challenging segregated facilities at the Greyhound bus station in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Thus, after two years at Southern, Mack was expelled and prohibited from enrolling in any state institutions of higher learning. With the assistance of his Southern professors, Mack Jones entered Texas Southern University and in 1962 earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science. Following in the footsteps of his mentors, Twiley and Lucius Barker, and others, he entered the University of Illinois-Urbana earning the Master of Arts (1964) and Doctor of Philosophy (1968) respectively.
Scholarly & Academic Contributions
Mack Henry Jones spent over 40 years as a distinguished professor of Political Science teaching and lecturing thousands of graduate and undergraduate students at over 65 institutions of higher education throughout the United States and as a Fulbright Scholar at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. However, it was his service at seven (7) Historically Black Colleges and Universities (Texas Southern, Atlanta University, Southern University, Howard University, Prairie View A & M University, Clark Atlanta University, and Mississippi Valley State University) that anchored his career. It was within these institutions that he developed his scholarship and leadership roles in the development of black political science and in the praxis of black politics. He played a critical role in the founding of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists and served as its first President. His inaugural address, “The Responsibility of the Black Political Scientists to the Black Community” was a marching order to NCOBPS members and future black political scientists, that they were not expected to just be learners of political science theories but to be fully engaged with the community as advocates for social justice and political change.
The hallmark of Mack Henry Jones’s contribution to the discipline and his sustaining legacy is as founder and chair of the doctoral program in Political Science at Atlanta/Clark Atlanta University. His contributions at Atlanta University were aided immensely by the support of Dr. Samuel DuBois Cook who was then a program officer at the Ford Foundation. He played a key role in educating and socializing a major cadre of black political scientists who in turn, have taught the distinctive model of scholar-activism to thousands of students at institutions of higher learning throughout the world. A prolific scholar and writer, Mack Henry Jones has chronicled his research and provides as a guide for future black political scientists, an arsenal of publications such as books (African American and the American Political System (4th edition) and Knowledge, Power, and Black Politics, a collection of his essays tracing the emergence, evolution, and maturation of the study of Black politics) and numerous articles, spanning his professional career, in scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers. As a scholar, who is also an activist, Mack Henry Jones has applied his political acumen to training newly elected black elected officials in the South and in consultation with grassroots organizations in both rural and urban communities. He also served as Director of the Delta Research and Cultural Institute at Mississippi Valley State University, Itta Bena, Mississippi.
