Chicago, Feb. 4th, 1848,

Friend Douglass,—I embrace a few minutes of leisure time, to put you in possession of a few facts in relation to the colored people of this city, which may not be uninteresting to your readers.

We have here a debating society, which is admirably calculated to bring out the talents of our young men. The subjects discussed are of a miscellaneous nature.

The number of colored inhabitants in this city is small—there being only about 250.

A circumstance occurred in this city a few days ago, which caused considerable excitement. A colored man, who was thought to be a spy, was taken into custody. An examination took place, the result of which was a severe flogging. In consequence of this, a law-suit is expected, of which, if it does take place, I will inform you in due season.

In my next, I will give you an account of the proceedings at a public meeting held in this city by the colored citizens, in relation to the merits of the colonization scheme, as a means of ameliorating the condition of the free colored people of the United States.

Yours for the slave,

J. J.Jones, John

John Jones (1816-79), often referred to by contemporaries and the press as the "most prominent colored citizen of Chicago,'' was the freeborn son of a free mulatto mother and a German named Bromfield. A native of Greene County, North Carolina, Jones was later apprenticed to a Tennessee tailor. Jones worked unti he could save $100, then moved in 1841 to Alton, lllinois, and married Mary Richardson, whom he had met in Tennessee. In 1845 the couple moved to Chicago, where Jones taught himself to read and write and where he established a tailor shop that catered primarily to whites. A successful businessman, Jones owned property worth an estimated $85,000 before Chicago's Great Fire of 1871. He lectured throughout Illinois, stressing economic success and social integration as fundamental goals for black advancement. He was vice president of the 1853 Colored National Convention held in Rochester, New York, and participated in the Illinois Colored Convention of 1856. Jones's speaking took on added fervor in 1853, when he fought laws discouraging black migration to Illinois, and again in 1864, when he led the successful fight for the repeal of Black Laws. Jones's home was a way station for the Underground Railroad and a meeting place and guest house for fellow abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass and John Brown. Lib., 18 May 1860; Chicago Tribune, 12 March 1875, 22 May 1879; Allen H. Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920 (Chicago, 1967), 6, 55, 77, 107, 111; Harold F. Gosnell, Negro Politicians: The Rise of Negro Politics in Chicago (1935; Chicago, 1967), 81-82, 111; Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy, They Seek a City ([Garden City], N.Y., 1945), 28-36; DANB, 366-67.