Mona Hinton

Edmonia "Mona" Caesar Clayton Hinton (1919–2008) was an educator, music contractor, and bookkeeper, as well as a business partner and advisor for her husband, the bassist and photographer Milt Hinton.

Early life Born in Centralia, Illinois, in 1919, Mona was the seventh of nine children of Nebuchadnezzar "Neb" Clayton and Rhoda (Bell) Clayton. She was born as her family was on the road moving from Okolona, Mississippi, to the north, relocating for better job opportunities as a part of the Great Migration of the time.

Mona grew up in Sandusky, Ohio, where the value of hard work was instilled in her from a young age. According to Mona, she had her first paying job by the age of 10, babysitting a family's children and handling their washing and ironing for $3 per week. After her father lost his job repairing train boilers during the Great Depression, everyone in the family was expected to contribute financially. Even so, money was extremely tight, and Mona recalls times when an apple or an orange would be divided nine ways for the children or when one pound of hot dogs would be stretched to feed a family of eleven.

Mona remembers her father as a very proud man who, even in the depths of the Great Depression, refused to accept any charity. He would regularly cut up old car tires and use the material to resole the children's shoes. Once after Mona's mother took the children to a relief center for food and used clothing, Neb insisted that they return the goods, telling the family, "We'll have to do without anything we can’t get on our own." These experiences helped instill in Mona the industriousness, determination, and discipline that would characterize the remainder of her life.

The Chicago years Hinton completed high school in Sandusky at the age of 16, after which she moved to Chicago to attend Poro Beauty School, a cosmetology school run by pioneering African-American entrepreneur Madam Annie Malone. Hinton graduated, returned to Sandusky, passed the licensing exam, and started working at a beauty parlor owned by one of her sisters. She soon realized that her true talents were in bookkeeping, not cosmetology, and she returned to Chicago to work as an assistant to Madam Malone.

When she left Sandusky, Mona's mother advised her, "You've known the church all your life. There are a lot of devils in the world, but the ones you’ll find in church are more likely nicer than what’s on the street."

Mona stayed on the road through the birth of her and Milt's only child, Charlotte, who was born on February 28, 1947. When traveling with a toddler became too difficult, the Hintons bought a two-family house in the Queens section of New York City, and ten years later they purchased a larger single-family home in an adjacent Queens neighborhood where they remained for the rest of their lives.

Life in Queens, NY After relocating to Queens, Mona continued to play a critical role in Milt's life and career. In addition to caring for their daughter, she handled all of the family's finances, and her attention to detail ensured the couple's financial security later in life. When Milt left the Calloway Orchestra in the early 1950s and began freelance work as a musician in New York, Mona kept track of Milt's work, scheduled interviews, coordinated public relations events, and often drove him back and forth to gigs (Milt never drove as an adult, due in part to a major car accident he was involved in as a teenager in Chicago). While waiting for Milt's late-night gigs to end, she would regularly socialize with musicians’ wives, most of whom were white due to the structural racism that was prominent in recording studios through much of the 1960s. She was known as being smart, articulate, and sophisticated and was able to find common ground with people from diverse backgrounds, putting everyone at ease. Mona credited her parents with helping her understand the value of education for improving one's life, noting: "My parents always believed in education and I mean they made it a very, very important part of our lives." This grew in part out of her involvement with the New York chapter of the Rinkey-Dinks, a social and civic club active in the 1950s and 1960s that was made up primarily of the wives of New York musicians. The group included Ruth Bowen, Helen Darden, Barbara Jacquet, and Catherine Basie, among others. They held fund-raisers and conducted service projects that broadly benefited the local African-American community.

Mona was consistently involved in charity work, often with her close friend and neighbor Catherine Basie, wife of William "Count" Basie. In addition to their work with the Rinkey-Dinks, Mona and Catherine were active in the Urban League as well as the local chapter of the NAACP. As a result of the lifelong friendship between Mona and Catherine, Mona was named co-executor of both Catherine and William Basie's estates, and she was co-guardian to Diane, the Basies' daughter.

Along with Milt, she was also active in Queens-based community organizations, notably the St. Albans Congregational Church. Mona served for more than a decade as co-director of the New York Musician's Fund (a forerunner of the Jazz Foundation of America), an emergency fund established by George Wein which lends money to musicians who are in need. In 1993, several friends helped establish the Mona Clayton Hinton Academic and Cultural Excellence (A.C.E) Fund to further the educational opportunities for elementary and middle school children in her local St. Albans neighborhood of Queens, NY. The Fund focused on what Mona referred to as her Four Rs: Reading, Respect, Rights, and Responsibility.

Hinton was always well respected in the jazz community, and she and Milt were viewed by many as role models. In 1995, the Arizona Paradise Valley Jazz Party selected Mona as the first non-performer ever to be the "Guest of Honor" at the festival. She also received local and state-based awards including the African American Heritage Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001 from the state of New York and the Person of the Year Award in 2000 from the Sidney Bechet Society. Mona died on May 3, 2008, after a long illness.