Nathaniel R. Jones

Nathaniel Raphael Jones (May 12, 1926 – January 26, 2020) was an American attorney, judge, and law professor. As general counsel of the NAACP, Jones fought to end school segregation, including in the northern United States.

Early years

Jones was born in the Smoky Hollow district of Youngstown, Ohio, several blocks from a federal courthouse that now bears his name. Nonetheless, Jones served with the United States Army Air Corps.

After the war, using the GI Bill, Jones entered Youngstown College (now Youngstown State University). There, he continued working with the NAACP, and when nearby Warren, Ohio tried to bar blacks from the local swimming pool, he saw future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall in action. After receiving his Artium Baccalaureus degree in 1951, he enrolled in law school, studying at nights while serving as director of Youngstown's Fair Employment Practices Commission. He graduated in 1956, receiving a Bachelor of Laws degree. In 1961, Attorney General Robert Kennedy nominated him as Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio in Cleveland. Thus in 1962, he became the first African American to serve in that position in the district.

In 1969, he was asked to serve as general counsel of the NAACP by executive director Roy Wilkins. For the next nine years, Jones directed all NAACP litigation. In addition to personally arguing several cases in the United States Supreme Court, he coordinated national efforts to end northern school segregation, to defend affirmative action, and to inquire into discrimination against black servicemen in the United States military. and won Reed v. Rhodes, which desegregated Cleveland-area schools.

After his retirement, Jones became a Senior Counsel in the Cincinnati office of Blank Rome LLP, also serving as its Chief Diversity and Inclusion officer. He also wrote a memoir, Answering the Call: An Autobiography of the Modern Struggle to End Racial Discrimination in America (2016), with a foreword by Harvard professor Evelyn Brooks Higgenbotham. On May 6, 2003, the second federal courthouse established in his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio was named in honor of Jones. Former U.S. Representative Louis B. Stokes of Cleveland was on hand for the naming ceremony. "This building, which will forever carry your name, will be a testament to outstanding public service by a local boy made good", Stokes said. its highest honor. He received the Laurel Wreath, his fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi's highest honor, in 2009. The University of Cincinnati named its Center for Race, Gender, and Social Justice to honor Judge Jones in 2019. He also received 19 honorary degrees. and a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. Jones died on January 26, 2020, at the age of 93 from congestive heart failure.