Edward Smyth Jones (March 1881 - 28 September 1968) was an African-American poet. He was born to former enslaved parents Hawk and Rebecca in Natchez, Mississippi. He attended Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College for 14 months in 1902-1903, and then later moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where he published his first book of thirty poems, The Rose that Bloometh in My Heart in 1908. Jones had a lifelong desire for education, and particularly wanted to study at Harvard University. Having left Louisville for Indianapolis, Jones set out on foot in the summer of 1910 for Cambridge, Massachusetts.