Thomas Elsa Jones was the fifth president of Fisk University

Fisk University

Fisk University is an historically black university founded in 1866 in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. The world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers started as a group of students who performed to earn enough money to save the school at a critical time of financial shortages. They toured to raise funds to...

, serving from 1926 to 1946. He was also president of Earlham College

Earlham College

Earlham College is a liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. It was founded in 1847 by Quakers and has approximately 1,200 students.The president is John David Dawson...

. A Quaker, Jones served as a missionary with his wife in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

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Jones received his bachelors degree from Earlham College

Earlham College

Earlham College is a liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. It was founded in 1847 by Quakers and has approximately 1,200 students.The president is John David Dawson...

 in 1912, and studied at Hartford Theological Seminary, graduating with a B.D. in 1915. Jones earned an M.A. in 1917 and an Ph.D. in sociology in 1926 from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

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Jones died on August 5, 1973 in Richmond, Indiana

Richmond, Indiana

Richmond is a city largely within Wayne Township, Wayne County, in east central Indiana, United States, which borders Ohio. The city also includes the Richmond Municipal Airport, which is in Boston Township and separated from the rest of the city...

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Sources

• Tennessee virtual archive
• Haverford College archival report on items relating to Fisk University
• Edward Thomas. Quaker Adventures: Experiences of Twenty Three Adventures of International Understanding. Chicago: Ravel Company, 1928.
• Time, Mar. 1, 1926