Minnie Jones
Women’s History Month Dedication
It has been said that “well-behaved women rarely make history.”
In Asheville, one name stands out as a model for making history simply by the way she lived her life.
Minnie Jones, who died in February 2015 at age 81, was a native of Spartanburg, SC and a lifelong community activist. She came to Asheville after working with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on civil rights issues, first in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, and later elsewhere across the South.
What drew her to Asheville was family ties, but upon settling here and seeing local disparities in housing and healthcare, she continued her civil rights work, beginning by volunteering to be the first African American to move into the previously all-white Pisgah View Apartments operated by the then-segregated Asheville Housing Authority.
From then on, wherever she saw needs in the community she worked tirelessly to fill them. She became a leader of Pisgah View’s residents’ council; she established and led the Minnie Jones After-School Program, which touched the lives of countless children over many years; encouraged the development of Pisgah View Community Garden to provide fresh, healthy vegetables for residents; and established a health clinic at the complex where most residents, especially the children, had no health insurance or access to medical care other than emergency rooms.
The health clinic grew into Western North Carolina Community Health Services, a nonprofit she established in April 1992 with Carlos M. Gomez and Dr. Polly Ross. Originally located in the historic Gudger house at 89 Montford Avenue, it opened its first clinic as a Wellness Center for persons with AIDS at Kenilworth Presbyterian Church. The clinic later expanded its services and moved to a location in West Asheville, and then to its current home at 257 Biltmore Avenue, where it was renamed the Minnie E. Jones Health Care Center. It now contracts with Buncombe County Health Department to provide affordable healthcare for all county residents.
The mission of WNCCHS is “to assist every resident of our service area with having access to a regular source of primary health care by providing culturally competent care, when our patients need it, at a cost individuals and the community can sustain.” In addition to specific preventive and primary care services, the center provides dental care and behavioral health services and operates a pharmacy.
Jones was also deeply involved with the founding of Pisgah Legal Services, which offers free and sliding-scale representation to those who cannot afford a lawyer.
At a meeting with the League of Women Voters in 2012 she was asked what motivated her activism. She shook her head and said, “I just saw things that weren’t right and tried to make it right. And there’s always a lot of things that just wasn’t right!”
That awareness and attitude moved Governor Beverly Perdue in 2009 to award Minnie Jones North Carolina’s highest civilian honor, the “Order of the Long Leaf Pine,” for her humanitarian work in Western North Carolina.
Minnie Jones made history by living well, behaving with courage, determination, and a guiding vision of a better life for everyone in the community. We can all thank her for that.
