Emma Hamilton Dancing

Jefferson Gatherford Ish, Jr. was born in 1888 in Little Rock, Arkansas to Jefferson Ish and Marietta Georgia Kidd Ish. He graduated from Talladega College in 1907 and followed his older brother, George William Stanley Ish (Yale College,1905), to Yale. He graduated from Yale in the class of 1909 and was a founding member of the Zeta Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha.

In 1911, he married Florence Kytte Ross, a graduate of Fisk University, and they had one daughter.

From 1915 to 1921, he worked at the Lincoln Institute (now Lincoln University) in Jefferson City, Missouri. He also worked at Straight College in New Orleans, for the Mosaic Templars of America, and the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company in Chicago. He became president of the State Agricultural Mechanical and Normal College in Pine Bluff, Arkansas (now University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff), and served in that position for seven years before returning to the insurance field. He died in 1962 in Chicago.