Help us help the Jones family get the land that was the site of the Jones Family Well back from the city of Huntsville, Alabama, and the University of Alabama. Help us get financial restitution due to the family after its land and well were stolen from them through a web of lies and deceit. Help us get #JusticeForWillieJones. 
 
Willie Jones owned a plot of land with frontage on Athens Pike (now Holmes Avenue). The land included a house and a well. The well was known in the community for the high quality of the water, and the Jones family freely shared the water from the well with the community. Around 1954, either the City of Huntsville or Madison County traced a clean water source to Willie Jones’ property. In 1955, Mr. Jones was offered $900 for the portion of land containing the well. Mr. Jones rejected the obscenely low offer. However, that didn’t stop the city from pursuing its goal of stealing the Jones Family Well.  
 
In 1958, the City of Huntsville condemned the Jones Family Well. Despite the City claiming the water was unfit for human consumption, it built a pump house on the location. This was the beginning of decades of deception targeting the Jones family, their well, and their property.  
 
Around the same time that the well was condemned, Mr. Jones was convinced by realtor and chief of the Huntsville Land Acquisition office, W. L. Sanderson, to move his family from the property on Athens Pike to sharecrop on a property a few miles away on Capshaw Road. Mr. Jones felt he had little choice in the matter now that the city had condemned and covered up his family’s well, their only source of clean water.  

Shortly after arriving at the house on Capshaw Road, Mr. Jones’ wife, Lola Mae Jones, died suddenly and unexpectedly. Willie Jones became a widower, now a single father with seven small children to care for, the youngest of whom was only nine months old at the time. After his wife died, W.L. Sanderson moved Willie Jones’ family to a house even farther from the main road. The family’s mail was not forwarded to the Capshaw Road address. This became an issue when, in 1962, the county and city governments began proceedings to condemn properties including the Athens Pike tract. The family maintains that Willie Jones never received any communications regarding the disposition of the land and that this prevented Willie Jones from receiving any compensation from the condemnation.  Additionally, the Willie Jones family maintains that despite public records to the contrary, Willie Jones never sold his property on Athens Pike to W.L. Sanderson.  
 
Willie Jones passed away in November 1971.  In 1995, his sons began researching the loss of their father’s property to recover any amounts owed to the family. They made copies of the court documents they were able to locate regarding the condemnation of the Willie Jones property.  The family also hired a genealogist to prepare a professional genealogy to determine the proper successors in interest of the properties that had been condemned for the University of Alabama.   
 
The Children of Willie Jones are now working with Where Is My Land, an organization dedicated to helping Black people discover, search for, identify, and reclaim land taken from them.  
 
In the wake of the recent successful return of Bruce’s Beach to the Bruce heirs, which was spearheaded by Where Is My Land’s founder Kavon Ward, the Jones family is hopeful. 
 
Help us help the Jones family reclaim the Jones Family Well and decades' worth of financial restitution from the City of Huntsville and the University of Alabama!!! Help make this right for the Jones family!!!  
 
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