Council Supports Renaming Library's Community Room After the Late Mimi Jones

The Friends of Grove Hall Branch Library have proposed renaming their second floor community space after Mamie (Mimi) Jones. Born May 4, 1947, Mimi was an outstanding student who was already deeply engaged in civil rights activism by the age of 15 when she helped register new voters and tutored them to pass poll literacy tests.

This work led to Mimi, her sister, and others staging a “swim-in” to desegregate public pools and beaches in St. Augustine, Florida. This act of civil disobedience resulted in Mimi and the other demonstrators being attacked with muriatic acid, targeted by police dogs, arrested, and charged with “deliberate disturbance of the peace”, “malicious trespassing,” and “conspiracy.” Photographs of the event were published nationwide the following day, helping to force President Johnson and the U.S. Senate to act on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Mimi left the South as part of the Great Migration, eventually finding herself in Grove Hall where she utilized her experience as a civil rights leader and activist to build community throughout Grove Hall and Roxbury.

Mimi hosted dialogues, communal readings, and worked tirelessly to support library programming. Since Mimi’s passing in 2020, patrons and staff of the Grove Hall Branch Library continue to remember her and wish to honor her by renaming the mezzanine conference room in her honor. The community space in question is currently named after an organization that never took occupancy of the space.

The Council adopted a resolution, supporting the Friends of Grove Hall Branch Library’s initiative to change the name of the mezzanine conference room from the Teri Room to the Mimi Jones Conference Room.