
Even with her teaching career and life cut short, Valena Cecelia MacArthur Jones managed to leave her mark on the education system in two states.
A Mississippi native who started teaching in rural Mississippi schools at 18, Jones graduated from New Orleans’ Straight University in 1892. She became principal at Bay St. Louis Negro School that same year, and started teaching in New Orleans public schools in 1897.
According to the Amistad Research Center, she received a bike after being voted “the most popular colored teacher in the city.”
Jones was forced out of education by a rule that did not allow married women to teach. In 1901, she married Robert, a Methodist Episcopal Church minister and assistant manager of the Southwestern Christian Advocate newspaper. They had three children.
With teaching behind her, Jones worked at the newspaper with her husband for 12 years. He said Jones “was not only proofreader, literary editor, but she was an editorial balance wheel.”
At 44, Jones died in New Orleans on Jan. 13, 1917. Two schools were named in her honor: the Bay St. Louis Negro School that she led and an elementary school for Black students in the 7th Ward.
The New Orleans “school became well-regarded for its activities and standards under the leadership of principal Fannie C. Williams,” the Amistad Research Center states, “and was visited by Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt.”
The Bay St. Louis school operated for 80 years. The last graduating class was in 1969. The property then served as a primary school until its closing in 1972.
Closed in 2008, the New Orleans school “served as a fine testimonial to its namesake,” the Amistad Research Center states, “who herself made a mark on the educational systems of New Orleans and Bay St. Louis.”
For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.