Known as “The Little Professor of Piney Woods”, Dr. Jones had a “head, heart, and hands” philosophy. His philosophy addressed educating the mind, bringing alive a spiritual passion, and required the students to develop three skills by which they could support themselves. He strongly believed in the “dignity of labor.” Many students are prepared to work hard. They came down the piney woods road and arrived at the campus, in a mule-drawn wagon, loaded with vegetables and goods, for their tuition.

In 1929, after learning of the need for a blind school for African-American children, Dr. Jones brought Ms. Martha Louise Foxx to Piney Woods, to be the first teacher and principal of the Mississippi Blind School for Negroes at The Piney Woods School. With little funding and many challenges, The Piney Woods School was open to all who would come. Despite being blind, everyone was expected to work. Students built school buildings, learned canning, and developed agricultural programs for beef and poultry. The girls learned sewing, basket-making, and weaving. During the Great Depression and through the end of World War II, the school faced tremendous hardships. Determined to not losing any of their programs, Dr. Jones, an outstanding fundraiser, took to the roads and traveled all over the country, sharing his vision. With the help of his wife, Grace Jones, set forth student music groups to help raise money for the school. The world-renowned Cotton Blossom Singers, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm swing band, Bluesman Sam Myers, and the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, got their beginning during these challenging years.

In the 1940s, blind students fully participated in school activities, becoming valued members of the Piney Woods community. Upon reaching high school, they were fully integrated into the regular high school classes, which was Dr. Jones and Ms. Foxx’s true legacy to the blind students at Piney Woods. They pioneered the nation’s first mainstream program for blind students. The success of this “experiment” forever changed the stigma of blindness for those who participated.

Hellen Keller visited the school and marveled at the work of Dr. Jones and Ms. Foxx. She appeared before the Mississippi legislature and appealed for funding for blind students, in 1950. The following year, the Mississippi School for Blind Negroes was moved to a campus in Jackson. It was later integrated with white blind students. Dr. Jones was greatly honored for all his contributions, received honorary doctorates from Clark College, Cornell College, University of Dubuque, and Otterbein College. He also earned an honorary Master of Arts from the Tuskegee Institute. His alma mater, The University of Iowa recognized him as their most outstanding alumni in 1954. In 1970, Dr. Jones received the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest commendation of the Boy Scouts of America. In 1981, Dr. Jones was inducted into the Mississippi Hall of Fame for his contributions to the state of Mississippi. He was also the author of several books, including Up Through Difficulties (1910), Piney Woods and Its Story (1923), and the Bottom Rail (1933), respectively. Dr. Jones died in 1975.

Love. Piney Woods cannot exist without love, and without a clear understanding of the ways, it binds us all together. It is love—for oneself, for one another, and then, eventually, for one’s own unique learning journey – that undergirds all of our efforts to help young people find their footing, their calling, and their voice. And it is the legacy of that love that keeps us connected to one another across the generations – and expands our community to literally stretch across the world.

As a residential community of adults and young people, and as a vibrant alumni network of scholar-activists, we are more than a school. We are a family. And so whether our students come to us from the protective cocoon of a loving family or the chaotic swirl of an unsafe environment, our primary job is to create a campus culture in which all people feel that they have a voice, value, and visibility, and where everyone’s daily experiences are rich with ritualistic reminders of why this is the place they belong.

This foundation has always been part of who we have been at Piney Woods. It will remain central to who we become.

Integrity.

To fulfill our goal of helping young people learn what it means to pursue lives of purpose, we must orient them not merely to the journey within; to a deep understanding of ones’ self, one’s passion, and one’s purpose –  but also to the journey without: to the world beyond these piney woods, and to the task of using one’s talents in the service of creating a more just and equitable world.

This is why everything we do here must have an eye towards justice: socially, in order to commit to ensuring equality among people: environmentally, in order to commit to protecting the needs of the natural world; and spiritually, in order to commit to honoring each person’s liberty of faith.

This, too, is what it means to educate for the head, the heart, and the hands. This, too, is what the world will come to recognize as a “Piney Woods graduate.”

Faith. What is the contemporary calling of a Christian school that is committed to preparing young people for a complex, multiracial world? And what is the result of a long-term vision in which a core set of design drivers shape every decision at Piney Woods – from residential buildings to staff recruitment to course curricula?

We believe that it will be an enduring culture of enlightenment and a community in which all structures and systems are intentionally designed in order to facilitate both individual fulfillment, Christian charity, and collective harmony. To get there, we must be systemic in the way we understand the interplay between several unlikely pairs: School and Community. Individual and group. Inside and outside. Think and do. Push and Project.

Here, we are taught to love ourselves and one another. Here, we are given the freedom to name what drives us, and what we wish to commit our life’s work towards achieving. Here, we are taught about God’s great power and shown how to channel the great power that resides within each of us. Here, we are put in a position to discover the “resistless urge” that will guide each of us throughout our adult lives.

This is what it means to be a part of the Piney Woods School. This is the vision that will animate our next one hundred years.

Excellence. Currently, Piney Woods has a campus of nearly 2,000 acres, most of which don’t factor into the daily experiences of our students.

In the future, we have a different vision – one in which the entire campus is our classroom and one where the rigor of our intellectual pursuits is augmented by the vigor of our physical exploration.

We believe as Maria Montessori did, that “the human hand allows the mind to reveal itself.”And so we envision a future in which our students’ hands are doing much more than holding a pencil, or taking notes; they are digging, testing, sculpting, building, and revealing. And we envision a campus-wide culture in which the boundary between class and campus, student and adult, and inside and outside is not on of division, but exploration.

At Piney Woods, we’re not merely students of the past. We’re also scientists of the future – and the lands will be our labs.

Empowerment. Understanding what it means to be free is the amount the greatest riddles any of us will face in our lives. Yet rarely in school settings do we all allow and equip young people to experience freedom in any meaningful way. The schedule is packed. The bell is about to ring. The campus is largely off-limits. Equally important, however, is how rarely we ask that any freedom and responsibility, our task as adults is not merely to give young people more autonomy – although that’s a part of it. Instead, we must create a culture in which conscience is the central objective of all learning experiences.

For us, freedom cannot mean merely granting young people the space to say whatever they want to say, or go wherever they want to go. For us, the task is ensuring that our graduates have the space to consider, “Of all the things I can say and do, what must I say? What must I do?” This is the primary journey our school must provide for its students: the journey within.

This is what we are intentionally designed to make room for. This is the indelible mark of a successful Piney Woods graduate.