DIG Memphis is excited to unveil a brand new collection – The Jones Family Boxtown Collection. This collection documents how, over seventy years, one family followed their own American Dream of education, faith, independence, community, and prosperity in Memphis. It also tracks the transformation of Boxtown, a rural enclave just south of downtown Memphis, from a “forgotten” stretch of Tennessee hill country into a community with schools, businesses, and an enormous amount of civic pride.
Based on a digital gift from the children and grandchildren of S. L. and Ida Mae Jones, the collection begins in the heart of the Great Depression. Having ancestral roots in McEwen, Tennessee, S. L. was born and raised in Boxtown. In 1938, he married his high school classmate and had already saved enough funds from selling homegrown produce to open his first grocery store.
From those humble beginnings, Jones Grocery grew into the first chain of Black-owned grocery stores in Memphis, while the Joneses and their five children became integral to the Memphis community, both in Boxtown and beyond.
The materials here span photographs, news clippings, business records, personal correspondence, church bulletins, and many other everyday artifacts of life in Boxtown. They shed light on the daily life of an upwardly mobile African American family across seventy years: birthday parties and anniversaries, graduations and family reunions, afterschool jobs and Sunday school. The Jones’ story is one of perseverance, pride, and community uplift. As Boxtown continues to change in the twenty-first century, this collection will preserve the history of families and individuals who made the neighborhood their home.
This digital collection was made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Internship Program at the University of Memphis, which supported the research and contributions of Kassandra Karrington-Fink and Vindez Nesby. Mary Lothrop served as graduate research assistant.
