Jones served as an associate editor of Charleston's African-American newspaper, "The Advocate". In 1896, he wrote and published a novel entitled "Hearts of Gold". In it Jones details a community of African-American leaders combating racism and systemic injustice in the post-American Civil War era, and highlights their dedication to education, journalism, and fraternal organizations for African-Americans abandoned by the white political system. African-American literature scholar Robert Bone stated that "Hearts of Gold" reflected a growing belligerence in response to white discrimination and violence against African Americans in the 1890s, and cited his characterization of this repression as "the reign of poor whites". Literary scholar John G. Mencke stated the novel's character, Regenia Underwood, represents a movement in African-American literature where the heroine devotes herself to the profession of teaching in the American South, rather than pursue a more comfortable life elsewhere. Hugh Gloster assessed that "Hearts of Gold" "presents decorous characters and probes the consequences of interbreeding in the Reconstruction period". He concluded that "Hearts of Gold" was noteworthy because it was the first American novel with a leading character who was the offspring of a lawful marriage between a white woman and an African-American man. By 2010, only eight known copies of "Hearts of Gold" had survived until the West Virginia University Press republished the novel in February of that year. Jones reportedly wrote several other novels; however, literary critics have only located "Hearts of Gold".