Draft:Patrice E. Jones

Jones is the daughter of Tisch Jones (née Patricia Rhone) a theatre artist, civil rights activist, and scholar.{{Cite journal|last=Winston|first=Connie|date=February 2004|title=Tisch Jones: Mama Inanna Re-Incarnated|journal=Black Masks|volume=16|pages=7–8, 15|via=ProQuest}} and Anthony Jones, an economist. She is the granddaughter of Geneva Handy Southall, a musicologist and professor who was the first woman to earn a doctorate degree in piano performance. Jones is a grandniece of the flautist D. Antoinette Handy and of Methodist bishop William Talbot Handy, Jr.{{Cite web|url=https://txarchives.org/smu/finding_aids/00295.xml|title=Texas Archival Resources Online|website=txarchives.org|accessdate=4 May 2023}} Her great-grandfather was Rev. William Talbot Handy, a choirmember of the Tuskeegee University Quartet and a Methodist minister who sang at the funeral of Booker T. Washington.{{Cite web|url=https://www.la-umc.org/obituary/1547371|title=Handy, Sr., Dr. William Talbot|website=www.la-umc.org|accessdate=4 May 2023}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-one-black-family-got-its-40-acres-and-turned-them-into-intergenerational-success-2e174032|title=How one Black family got its 40 acres — and turned them into intergenerational success|first=Emma|last=Ockerman|website=MarketWatch|date=26 February 2023 |accessdate=4 May 2023}} Jones’s great-great-great-great-grandfather was Ephraim G. Peyton, a slaveowner and justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi. Peyton's son, Ephraim G. Peyton Jr, had a daughter, Florence Geneva Handy, with one of his father's house slaves. Florence Geneva Handy, Jones's great-great-grandmother, was born enslaved but obtained her freedom soon after due to the Emancipation Proclamation. In the 1880s, Florence Geneva Handy and her husband, Emanuel Handy, Jr. (son of Emanuel Handy).{{Cite web|url=https://much-ado.net/legislators/legislators/emanuel-handy/|title=Against All Odds: The First Black Legislators in Mississippi|accessdate=18 February 2024}}, were given money from her father to purchase Handy Heights, a 40-acre farm in Hazlehurst, Mississippi that later grew to 116 acres.{{Cite web|url=https://handyheights.org/|title=Handy Heights|accessdate=4 May 2023}} In the 1970s, Jones’s great-grandmother, Dorothy Pauline Pleasant Handy, set up a trust to maintain the upkeep of Handy Heights, which was passed down through generations of women in the Handy family.

Jones earned a Bachelor of Arts in English language and literature from the University of New Orleans in 2016. In 2018, she earned a Master of Arts degree in English language and literature with a concentration in American literature from the university. She wrote her Master’s thesis on New Orleans-born early 20th-century writer, Alice Dunbar-Nelson.{{Cite web|url=https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2505/|title="Reading Alice Dunbar-Nelson Through the Eyes of a Creole" by Patrice E. Jones|date=6 August 2018 |accessdate=4 May 2023 |last1=Jones |first1=Patrice |work=University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations }} She has worked as an English instructor at Delgado Community College, the University of Holy Cross, and at the University of New Orleans.

Jones became a trustee of Handy Heights in 2020, a role she shares with two other family members. She has worked on renovating her great-grandparents' house at Handy Heights, the largest of the buildings on the property. The other three houses on the property, craftsman-style homes, built in the early 1900s, were used by Jones's great-uncles, who lived at Handy Heights until the 1980s.

As of 2024, Jones has over 123,000 followers on TikTok under the username @thecreoleo.{{Cite web|url=https://www.tiktok.com/@thecreoleo?lang=en|title=Patrice E. Jones (@thecreoleo)|website=TikTok|accessdate=4 May 2023}} She posts about her family history, her activism work for civil rights and reparations, and her renovation and historic preservation projects on her social media accounts. She has received millions of views on her videos about Handy Heights.

She advocates for reparations for black people.{{Cite web|url=https://handyheights.org/2023/04/18/patrice-discusses-handy-heights-and-reparations-on-dr-phil/|title=Patrice discusses Handy Heights and Reparations on Dr. Phil – Handy Heights|accessdate=4 May 2023}} In April 2023, Jones was interviewed by Phil McGraw on the talk show Dr. Phil to discuss reparations and how owning land helped members of her family produce income and receive education.{{Cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86KIhRi1jnE|title=She's A Descendant of A Slave and A Slave Owner|date=18 April 2023 |accessdate=4 May 2023|via=www.youtube.com}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.drphil.com/shows/should-we-allow-reparations-to-black-americans/|title="Should We Allow Reparations to Black Americans?"|date=18 April 2023|website=Dr. Phil|accessdate=4 May 2023}}

Patrice has been represented by the FT45 modeling agency since 2017.{{Cite web|url=https://www.ft45.agency/women/1371037/patrice-j|title=FT45 Women Patrice J|accessdate=18 February 2024}}

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:Category:Living people

:Category:African-American female models

:Category:21st-century African-American academics

:Category:21st-century American academics

:Category:American people of Creole descent

:Category:American TikTokers

:Category:Handy family

:Category:Historical preservationists

:Category:Louisiana Creole people

:Category:People from New Orleans

:Category:Teachers of English

:Category:University of New Orleans alumni

:Category:University of New Orleans faculty

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