David Paul Jones and his wife, Martha, were Skokie’s first Black homeowners in 1961, and despite initial racial hostility toward them, Jones went on to become active in the village’s civic life, serving for many years on its Human Relations Commission and its Board of Fire and Police Commission.
“He was just the kindest man,” said Barbara Meyer, a retired corporation counsel for Skokie. “I knew him while he was chair of the Fire and Police Commission, and he did an amazing job and cared about the community he lived in.”
Jones, 93, died of natural causes Sept. 30 at the Presbyterian Westminster Place assisted living community in Evanston, said his daughter Becky Betts. He had lived in Skokie from 1961 until 2019, when he moved to Evanston.
Born in Syracuse, New York, in 1932, Jones spent his early years living in Nedrow, a Syracuse suburb. At age 14, he moved by himself to Chicago to live with relatives. He then moved with those relatives to a farm near tiny Cassopolis, Michigan, in the southwest part of the state, graduating from Cassopolis High School in 1950.
Jones studied for two years at the University of Illinois’ Navy Pier campus before transferring to the university’s Urbana-Champaign campus, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1955. He served for 21 months on active duty in the Army in South Korea from 1955 until 1956, receiving a first lieutenant’s commission.
Back home, Jones got married in 1957 and began pursuing a master’s degree in social and industrial relations from Loyola University Chicago, which he completed in 1960. His master’s thesis was on Illinois’ temporary emergency unemployment insurance benefit program.
Jones’ first local job, from 1957 until 1959, was as a research analyst in the Illinois Department of Labor’s Division of Unemployment Compensation. He later worked for the city of Chicago in urban planning.
“He had an extremely curious mind, and was always the sort of person who would ask a little bit more and would completely engage with the information that was given before him,” said his daughter Gail Jones Klopfer. “He wasn’t quick to judge, and I think that goes along with being an analyst. He would try to find all the information he could about a subject, and then he would get more excited about things when other people were interested as well.”
In 1961, Jones and his wife decided to move from the South Side to Skokie — for very practical reasons, Betts said.
“My mom worked for Stepan Chemical, which moved to Northfield, and my mom had been commuting for a while with a group of fellow coworkers, all of whom were male. My dad was not a huge fan of that. He didn’t like that it was such a long commute for her and also that she had to commute with these men,” Betts said. “So they looked in northern suburbs like Highland Park, Evanston and Skokie. Evanston was more integrated, but they just weren’t finding a house that they liked. So they found a new home in Skokie. They weren’t trying to make some sort of statement. For practical reasons, it was a much better commute for my mom, and (my dad) also could take public transportation to the city easily.”
Skokie has had Black residents since before 1920, according to the Skokie Heritage Museum’s review of census records. However, none had ever owned a home in the village. Federal and local fair housing laws had not yet been enacted in the early 1960s.
When the Joneses tried to buy a house in Skokie, they encountered difficulty. They accepted help from a white couple who bought a split-level on Kildare Avenue on their behalf. That white couple, who had connected with the Joneses through the Evanston chapter of the NAACP, then immediately transferred the property to the Joneses.
The real estate agent who represented the homebuilder, Joseph J. Hansen, took out an ad in a February 1961 issue of the Skokie Review newspaper, attempting to distance himself from the sale by insisting that he sold the house to the white couple and not to the Joneses.
David and Martha Jones were immediately welcomed by some in the community. Skokie’s then-village manager and village board issued a statement in January 1961 that “the constitutional and civil rights of all citizens and property owners, old and new, will be protected with all the resources at our command” and that “we are confident that all citizens of Skokie share our determination to maintain law and order.”
However, the couple’s new home faced numerous acts of vandalism. The Tribune wrote in May 1961 that the Joneses’ home had been the subject of violence, spurring Skokie to place the house under 24-hour guard. After that guard was removed, the Tribune wrote, the home’s picture window was smashed by rocks thrown by vandals, who also scribbled on the window and the front door, “Go to hell.”
At one point, Betts said, arsonists tried to set the home on fire, and vandals poured white paint on the home. Some neighbors yelled racial epithets at Martha Jones, and the couple found razor blades hidden inside a cake sent to the home under the guise of welcoming them. Eventually, however, racist actions toward the couple subsided, and Jones and his wife went on to remain in their home for the next 58 years.
“To hear my dad tell it, it was no big deal to find a house and purchase that house,” said another daughter, Paula Manchester. “Only after they started seeing the reactions and seeing other people who were trying to help them that they realized this was a big deal. To my dad, it was just trying to do the American Dream — get married and buy a house.”
Betts said as the years went on, her father saw the racism as less of a defining characteristic of his time in Skokie.
“If you were speaking to my father, he would have a hard time talking about the negative part about moving into the community,” Betts said. “He would be telling you about all the invitations they received, all the positives about the community, all the people who were kind to them, including religious leaders from several faiths.”
The Skokie Heritage Museum, in conjunction with Skokie’s Human Relations Commission and the Skokie Public Library, held an event in 2024 about the history of fair housing in the village. Museum manager Emily England, who met Jones at that event, called him “a phenomenal human being.”
“He really just made the integration of Skokie possible in a lot of different ways,” England said. “He was very kind and humorous, and had a strong fortitude of character.”
At the 2024 fair housing event, Jones called the crimes against him “a few difficulties when we first moved in and then after for about four or five months.”
“People would put liquid metal in the locks,” he said, which he was able to remove, according to a 2024 Tribune article. He also discussed the attempted arson.
Skokie Human Relations Commission member Sheila Crumrine, who attended the event, recalled Jones’ commitment to the community, his generosity of spirit and his family’s “capacity for strength to become such a leader in the community.”
Jones later worked in sales for Xerox, and then pursued a career as a stockbroker, working for Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns and JPMorganChase. He retired at about age 80, Betts said.
Jones spent many years on Skokie’s Board of Fire and Police Commission and its Human Relations Commission. In 2018, Skokie recognized him for having served for 50 years on the Board of Fire and Police Commission.
Klopfer said her father’s experiences from the move informed his work on Skokie’s commissions.
“There’s always this underlying thing of fairness — is there fairness in hiring and firing?” she said. “That’s where the interest originated, just making sure there’s always someone to see if things are fair.”
Jones was active at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, where he became friends with a fellow parishioner, Edward Sips.
“The one thing I cherished about David was that he was thoughtful and listened to what others had to say,” Sips, 83, said. “He taught all of us how to spend more time listening than talking.”
Outside of work, Jones enjoyed spending time with extended family.
Jones’ wife died in 2022. In addition to Betts, Klopfer and Manchester, he is survived by a brother, Robert; and two sisters, Mary Jones and Barbara Geiszler; five grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
