This Black northern Minnesota inventor changed the world. Many Minnesotans don’t know him

In every corner of Minnesota, there are good stories waiting to be told of places that make our state great and people who in Walt Whitman’s words “contribute a verse” each day. MPR News sent longtime reporter Dan Gunderson on a mission to capture those stories as part of a new series called “Wander & Wonder: Exploring Minnesota’s unexpected places.”

Frederick McKinley Jones arrived in northwestern Minnesota on a cold December day in 1912, stepping from a train in Hallock, near the Canadian border. 

Born in Kentucky to a Black mother and an Irish father, his mother left when he was very young, and at age 7 his father left him at an orphanage. He ran away from the orphanage at 12. At 19, he’d found his way to Hallock to work on a farm owned by railroad magnate James J. Hill. 

With a knack for fixing machines and cars, Jones was given a job repairing farm equipment. Over the next few decades, his inventions would reshape American and global industry.

The self-taught engineer would go on to invent refrigerated shipping, allowing trucks and trains to move fresh and frozen food worldwide. His Thermo King refrigeration technology also allowed blood supplies to be transported during World War II, saving countless lives. In Hallock he built one of the first snowmobiles, a portable X-ray machine and a sound system for the local movie theater that would revolutionize motion pictures.

With dozens of patents to his name, he was the first Black person to win the National Medal of Technology. Yet, many Minnesotans would be hard-pressed to recognize the name Frederick McKinley Jones or know that a Black Minnesotan had quietly changed the world.

‘He didn’t get the credit’

Most of the story about Fred Jones is known from newspaper articles and books written by two amateur historians with ties to Hallock. Most of the information is second-hand, and it’s sometimes contradictory. Jones left little of his life in his own words.

In Hallock, a small mural on Main Street notes his contributions as an inventor. The Kittson County Museum maintains a small permanent exhibit about his life. People called him Casey Jones and that’s how most locals remember him to this day. 

Kittson County Historical Society executive director Cindy Adams grew up in Kittson County but never learned about Fred Jones until she became the local historian. She said he’s probably the county’s most famous person. 

Jones spent about 15 years in Hallock where Adams said he quickly made friends with influential residents, including the newspaper editor’s son, the owner of a repair shop, and a local doctor with a huge library where he’d get books since there was no public library then in Hallock. 

Jones also sent for mail-order books on mechanical engineering and electronics. He built radios and sold them to local residents. He was entirely self-taught.

When the local doctor wished for a portable X-ray machine, Jones built one that was hauled around the hospital on a small wagon. Adams says he also incorporated improvements that made sharper X-ray images.     

As was often the case, he didn’t get credit for the invention. Adams pulled a faded newspaper article from her archive.

“It says a doctor came to visit and was so impressed with it, and a couple months later that invention was patented by someone else,” she said. “It’s really kind of a sad story. He didn’t get the credit where credit was due when he was alive.”

Jones was driven to solve mechanical and electrical problems and often asked for only small payments for his inventions. He also built a radio transmitter, a very early version of a snowmobile and the first fire siren in Hallock.

He built and raced cars on dirt tracks across the Midwest with support from local businesses.

When Jones built a system for the Hallock movie theater to improve the quality of sound in the early talking pictures, it caught the attention of Minneapolis businessman Joseph Numero. He recruited Jones to work at his company and later started Thermo King after Jones invented the portable refrigeration system.

‘We benefit every day’

Adams said that Jones seemed to find a level of respect in this rural very white town. She pulled out a letter Jones wrote while in the Army during World War I.

“In one of the letters we have here, he referred to Hallock as God’s country. And I think that people really welcomed him into this area,” she said.

In a 1949 Saturday Evening Post article about Jones, the reporter wrote that Jones remembered Hallock with special gratitude. 

“I think moving to Hallock was transformative for Frederick McKinley Jones. Hallock only had about 1,000 people when he moved there, and they were all white. But people were drawn to Jones, I think because of his genius,” said Bill Convery, director of research at the Minnesota Historical Society.

That doesn’t mean Jones did not face discrimination, “but he had such a powerful personality, and he had such great ideas that I think people found it relatively easy to look past their prejudices to see the potential of what Jones represented,” said Convery.

In Hallock, Adams said even Jones’ friends were sensitive to racial boundaries.

“Cliff Bouvette (newspaper editor's son) was his friend, but he didn’t like the idea that he married a white woman in Hallock, which I found interesting, because you’d think he would want to support him, but I suppose he was worried what people would say,” she said.

Adams said Jones as an adult could still could recall the pain of his father leaving him at an orphanage. Biographers later wrote that as long as Jones lived, tears filled his eyes when he talked about that day. “He never saw his dad again,” said Adams. “And I just find that heartbreaking.”

In his later years, Jones struggled with declining health after years of long days and little sleep. Rest was often evasive and he sometimes turned to alcohol for respite. “My head is like a machine,” he reportedly told his wife. “It won’t let me rest. If only I could turn it off.” 

Despite having more than 60 patents, Jones never became wealthy and he spent his last years in “a modest home in Minneapolis,” said Convery. He was 67 when he died.

“He was innovating in a time when the achievements of African Americans received very little publicity, where African Americans like Jones had worked twice as hard to get the same amount of recognition,” said Convery.  

“Jones,” he added, “is somebody that we really should remember, because we all benefited from his innovation, we benefit every day.”

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