While leading Massachusetts Advocates for Children, his Task Force on Children Out of School not only uncovered the scandal of over 10,000 children who were pushed out and excluded from the Boston Public Schools, but also the shame of innumerable children with disabilities who were misdiagnosed, warehoused, stigmatized and educationally languishing in separate classrooms. That report, and the subsequent passage of Chapter 766, the special education law in Massachusetts, was, to Hubie, among the most important legacies and contributions of his career. Thousands upon thousands of children, previously deemed unteachable, now go to school in the least restrictive environment where they can learn, grow, and succeed with dignity and without stigma.

Hubie Jones was born in New York City in 1933. He earned his BA degree from the City College of New York in 1955 and came to Boston to attend graduate school in social work at Boston University. It was during graduate school that Hubie attended a Ford Hall Forum speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and was inspired to make a life-long commitment to work for social justice.

If you don’t stay vigilant, no matter what victories you win, they will attempt to roll them back. So one of the things we’ve learned at MAC was that you never win. You may get a victory, you may get a concession, they may be put in place, but you’d better be there to monitor what is going on…

After a stint at two social work positions, he became associate director and then executive director at Roxbury Multi-Service Center in 1967. While there, he noticed a pattern of children who were not in school. He led a formal investigation through a “blue ribbon” Task Force on Children Out of School, which published a scathing indictment of the Boston School Department for systematically excluding 10,000 children because they were disabled, had behavioral problems, did not speak English or were pregnant.

That report, The Way We Go to School: The Exclusion of Children in Boston, eventually led to the groundbreaking, first-in-the-nation enactments of two landmark laws in Massachusetts designed to include previously excluded populations of children: the special education law and the bi-lingual education law. The Task Force he chaired became known as the Massachusetts Advocacy Center, or MAC, (presently, Massachusetts Advocates for Children), of which he was board chair until 1980 and is currently board emeritus.

It’s not only about getting change, but also about institutionalizing change. Locking change in. Advocacy is not about in one day out the next, in one month out the next. The issues we’re concerned about mean having a lifetime commitment to children.

Emerging from his commitment to social justice and his identity as an advocate came a man of many talents and sides: an institution builder, a mentor, a problem solver, a teacher, an administrator, a television commentator. He is a rare individual of integrity, talent and humility who is known and admired by people from all segments of society: business, community, academia and government. He is also the husband of Dr. Katherine Butler Jones and father to eight grown children.

A community is best judged by how it treats youth with serious personal troubles and who are at risk. No child should be lost. No child, no young person should be marginalized. Every young person counts.