Richard Hunt
American, 1935–2023
John Jones 1968–69
Welded aluminum
Steps recreated under the direction of the artist’s estate in 2024

Richard Hunt was only thirty-two when the State of Illinois Sesquicentennial Committee commissioned him to create a sculpture celebrating John Jones (1816–1879), Illinois’ first Black elected official. The style is uncharacteristic of Hunt’s body of work, but Hunt took the commission as a challenge. The artist shows Jones burdened with racial injustice, dragging his foot and weighing down his shoulders. “I made him look as if he is climbing, burdened with weights that are part of him.” Hunt said of this sculpture in a profile in Ebony magazine in April 1969, “They show his struggle.”

John Jones was a self-educated businessman and racial justice advocate. He was born free in North Carolina at a time when the state held 140,000 Black people in bondage. His parents sent him to Memphis, where an apprenticeship could fend off claims on his freedom. There, Jones met his wife, Mary Jane Richardson Jones (1819–1910). In 1845, they moved to Chicago, where the family spent the next two decades demanding the end of the Illinois Black Codes. The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, Chicago Black Codes barred Black citizens from voting, testifying against whites, receiving public education, entering public accommodation, and public transportation. Free Blacks had to register with the county clerk or risk losing their freedom. Despite the danger, John and Mary used their Chicago home on West 9th St. and Plymouth Ct. as a stop on the Underground Railroad. They led hundreds of formerly enslaved people to freedom.

John Jones convinced the Illinois legislature to repeal the Black Codes in 1865. Five years later, Jones became Illinois’ first Black elected official, a Cook County Commissioner. Mary lent her considerable stature to support women-led organizations. Her efforts laid the foundation for the next generation of Black female leadership in Chicago, including journalist and anti-lynching advocate Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931) and organizer and activist Fannie Barrier William (1855–1944).

The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, Chicago

Label Audio