JONES, ELAINE RUTH
A leading African–American attorney, Elaine Ruth Jones has devoted her career to the cause of CIVIL RIGHTS. Since 1993, she has served as director-counsel of the NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND (LDF). Known for her
eloquence and tenacity as well as for her creative
approach to the cause of civil rights, Jones heads
the LDF’s 80-member staff while frequently
speaking out on legal, social, and political issues.
When Jones was born on March 2, 1944, in
Norfolk,Virginia, opportunities for blacks in her
birthplace were limited. Her father was a Pull-
man porter who had been taught to read by her
college-educated mother. Jones, her brother, and
her parents felt the sting of being turned away
from whites-only facilities. Yet the family
believed in success through hard work and espe-
cially in education. Jones graduated third in her
class from BOOKER T. WASHINGTON High
School, in Norfolk, in 1961, and then attended
Howard University, from which she graduated
cum laude with a political science degree in
1965.
Jones served in the Peace Corps in Turkey
between 1965 and 1967. She returned to the
United States determined to pursue social
change through the law. Particularly inspiring to
her was the career of THURGOOD MARSHALL,
founder of the LDF and later a U.S. Supreme
Court justice. In 1970, she became the first black
woman to graduate from the University of Vir-
ginia Law School. Jones’s distinction in law
school earned her a lucrative offer from the New
York–based law firm of Nixon, Mudge, Rose,
Guthrie, and Alexander, at that time the firm
that represented President RICHARD M. NIXON.
At the last minute, she chose not to accept the
offer; she wanted to pursue Marshall’s work.
Jones joined the LDF as an attorney. As the
NAACP’s litigation and public education arm,
the LDF provides legal assistance to African
Americans, and has brought more cases before
the U.S. Supreme Court than any other legal
body except the solicitor general’s office.
Assigned to death-penalty cases, Jones repre-
sented numerous black defendants in state and
federal court. Only two years into her career, she
worked on the landmark U.S. Supreme Court
case FURMAN V. GEORGIA, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S. Ct.
2726, 33 L. Ed. 2d 346 (1972), in which the
Court struck down death penalty statutes in 39
states after finding that the death penalty vio-
lated the CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS
Clause of the EIGHTH AMENDMENT. The ruling
held up hundreds of executions until states
could rewrite their laws.
Starting in 1975, Jones spent two years
working for the federal government. As a special
assistant to the U.S. secretary of transportation,
she helped to formulate official policies on a
broad range of transportation issues. Among
other accomplishments, she helped to open the
doors of the U.S. Coast Guard to women. But
she longed to return to her former job at the
LDF. “Once you get started doing civil rights
work, it is hard to put it aside and move on to
something else,” she said. “I believe that is
because there is still so much injustice. You see it
everywhere and you want to do everything pos-
sible to stop it.”
Jones returned to the LDF in 1977, to work
in its Washington, D.C., office as an assistant
counsel. She again litigated civil rights cases, but
the new position also required her to review
government actions and policies. She monitored
civil rights enforcement activities of EXECUTIVE
BRANCH agencies and legislative initiatives of
Congress. In 1988, she became deputy director
and counsel for policy and planning, devoting
herself to determining new areas in which the
LDF could pursue its civil rights agenda. In
1989, Jones became the first African American
to be elected to the American Bar Association’s
Board of Governors.
These positions gave Jones a political educa-
tion that broadened her public visibility and her
view of the LDF’s mission.When an opening for
the organization’s highest position, director-
counsel, appeared in 1993, she was the board of
directors’ obvious choice. “[She] was precisely
the kind of person whom Justice Marshall no
doubt envisioned to take up the leadership posi-
tion,” commented LDF president Robert H.
Preiskel. “Elaine shared a good many of the
characteristics that made him such a powerful
leader.”
Jones soon began pursuing a broader agenda
for the LDF. She identified new civil rights
issues, including environmental disparities as
evidenced by the dumping of toxic waste in
minority communities and the presence of dan-
gerous lead-based paint in buildings in which
black families lived and the need for HEALTH
CARE reform. She also used the LDF’s public-
education function to address traditional issues,
advocating continued support for AFFIRMATIVE
ACTION programs and opposing racial inequity
in death-penalty cases. Jones supported the
Racial Justice Act (H.R. 3315, 103d Cong., 2d
Sess. [1994] §§ 601–611), legislation—ultimately
stripped from President BILL CLINTON’s 1994
crime bill—that would have prohibited execu-
tions that fit a racially discriminatory pattern. In
1994, she received the Washington Bar Associa-
tion’s prestigious CHARLES HAMILTON HOUSTON
Medallion of Merit, an award given to leaders
who use the law for social change. In 2000, Pres-
ident Clinton presented her with the Eleanor
Roosevelt Human Rights Award.
In recent years, Jones has continued her
work as president and director-counsel of the
LDF. She has received numerous awards and
honorary degrees and is an active teacher and
lecturer both in the United States and around
the world. She is frequently called upon to com-
ment regarding civil rights issues of national sig-
