Shandy Wesley Jones was the first African-American elected official from Tuscaloosa Alabama. Shandy Wesley Jones was a member of the Alabama House of Representatives from 1868 to 1870.

Jones was active in the American Colonization Society which advocated the emigration of free blacks back to Africa, where they found the nation of Liberia. Jones had repeatedly made plans to emigrate, but he remained in Tuscaloosa and accumulated real estate becoming one of the richest African Americans in Alabama.

After being scorned by the Tuskaloosa Independent Monitor and harassed by the Ku Klux Klan he fled to Moundville before relocating to Mobile, where President Grant appointed him to the customs inspections bureau.

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