Josephine Jones

Josephine Eliza Clay Jones, a retired librarian, educator and long-time Democratic political activist , died from complications of diabetes on April 1 at Flushing Hospital Medical Center. She was 83 years old.

Born Eliza Clay in Anderson, South Carolina, in 1931 she survived a childhood illness of typhoid fever, missing an entire year of school in the process, but recovered well enough to graduate from Reed Street High School as the No. 3 student in her class, and win the Delta Scholarship Medal from the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and attend South Carolina State University, a historically black college in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

After graduating from South Carolina State, she moved to New York in 1954 and lived with her aunt Tollie Clay in Harlem. She later earned a master’s degree in library science from Columbia University in 1962, joined the Queens Borough Public Library, where she worked for 32 years in various roles at the Laurelton, South Jamaica, Flushing, Maspeth and East Flushing branches, among others.

Following the death of her father Lewis Clay in 1962, Josephine later married George F. Jones and moved to Carlyle Towers, a new high-rise apartment complex on Kissena Boulevard in Flushing. By 1966 she had her first and only son David, and following an 1970 divorce, would raise him with the help of her mother Josephine Pearl Clay and sister Jonell Clay.

Following her mother’s death in 1975, Josephine continued to raise David with the help of her sister, until he graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1984 and later earned a BSJ in 1988 from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., becoming a professional journalist.

After retiring from the Queens Borough Public Library in the mid-1990’s, Josephine continued her lifelong political activism, actually mounting an insurgent campaign on the Green Party line against state Sen. Toby Stavisky in 2000. She was won less than two percent of the vote, but undeterred.

She was a life member of the NAACP, a vice president of the West Flushing Civic Association, an executive board member of the Flushing Democratic Club and before her residence at William Benenson Rehabilitation Pavillion, in Flushing, she also volunteered at the Flushing Hospital Medical Library.

She is survived by her son, David Jones, of Newark, N.J., cousin, Al Norris, Jr., of Anderson, S.C., cousin. Minnie Bozeman of Belton, S.C. and other extended family members.