All About Our History

Jones Elementary School has been part of the American story for over a century. Its history reflects both the changing laws of its country and the constant dedication of its community.

Sometime after the Annapolis Short Line came through the farmland surrounding Peter Jones’ store (near the current Park and Ride on Jones Station Road) in 1871, Jones opened as one of county’s first schools for African American children. It would remain an African American school for nearly 100 years.

The earliest Jones School is barely remembered as an old shack near Carpenter’s Hill Graveyard. By the first world war, the school had moved down the road to a converted house it shared with the community hall, where the Masonic Lodge on B&A Boulevard now stands. In 1927, with help from a fund established by philanthropist and one-time Sears president Julius Rosenwald, a new two-room school opened at the side of the Wayman African Methodist Episcopal Church on Hoyle Lane.

Rosabel Landon began her 35-year tenure as Jone’s principal at the two-room school in 1930, when she was also its sole teacher. Landon was proud when Jones was awarded a Certificate of Standardization in 1935. As the Supreme Court’s “separate but equal” ruling was being wrestled with all over the country, NAACP counsel Thurgood Marshall met with the black teacher’s association in Annapolis and, in 1940, helped secure equal salaries for African American teachers in Anne Arundel Country.

The two-room school could barely contain its 74 students by 1952, and the Board of Education rented the Church Hall next door to relieve overcrowding. Consolidation of the area from Earleigh Heights Road to the Bay Bridge brought a new brick school with eight classrooms to the property across the street from the church, which was deeded to the Board of Education for ten dollars by community-member Arthur White. In 1957, the new Jones opened its doors to 301 enrolled African American students.

Jones was integrated peacefully in 1966, twelve years after Thurgood Marshall won unanimous support for school integration from the Supreme Court in the “Brown vs. the Board of Education” decision. The school was unique now not only for its African American heritage, but for its small size, which made it vulnerable to a Board of Education bid to close Jones in 1981.

An impassioned outcry arose from the community. A report to the BOE by a citizen’s group led by Paul Spiecker declared, “The small school is a family…each child has a much greater chance to achieve the essential feeling of belonging.” It was agreed that Jones would stay open.

A tradition of community support and of excellence in staff and students stands strong at Jones; an African American heritage and historic smallness add unique value to a school that continues to enrich and be enriched by its community. Jones Elementary School enters the millennium with a bright future rooted securely in its past.