Jones (Lois Mailou) is born in Boston.

The daughter of Thomas and Carolyn (Dorinda) Jones, Lois Mailou Jones graduates from the High School of Practical Arts, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Boston Normal School. After beginning her career as a textile designer, Jones establishes the art department at the Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina. She joins the faculty of Howard University in 1930, where she remained for almost 50 years. Jones studies in Paris in 1937, marries Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noel in 1953, and maintains homes in Haiti and on Martha’s Vineyard. She dies in Washington, D.C. in 1998.