In a career lasting more than 70 years, Lois Mailou Jones overcame racial and gender prejudices to become a successful painter and designer whose influence as a teacher extended far beyond her native country.

Jones was raised in Boston by working-class parents who emphasized the importance of education and hard work. After graduating with honors from Boston's School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Jones designed textiles for several New York City firms. She left in 1928 to teach at Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia, North Carolina. At Palmer, Jones founded the art department, coached basketball, taught folk dancing, and played the piano for Sunday services. Two years later she moved to Washington, D.C., to establish a career in painting. For more than 40 years, between 1930 and 1977, Jones won recognition for her art while teaching full time at Howard University, where she trained several generations of African American artists.

Jones was strongly affected by a sabbatical year she spent in Paris, 1937-38. After so much time in a segregated society, she felt exhilarated to be living in a country where her race seemed irrelevant. Equally important was her introduction to African tribal art, which was enormously popular in Paris. At home, Jones began incorporating African motifs into her canvases. After her 1953 marriage to the Haitian graphic designer Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noël, Jones became intrigued by the bright colors and bold patterns of the Haitian art she saw on annual trips to her husband's home.

In 1970 Jones was commissioned by the United States Information Agency to serve as a cultural ambassador to Africa. She gave lectures, interviewed local artists, and visited museums in 11 countries. This experience led to a further exploration of African subjects in Jones's work, especially in the paintings executed between 1971 and 1989, which one writer has called "her most original contributions to American art."