Black History Month Profile Series: Elaine Jones

This month, DPIC celebrates Black History Month with weekly profiles of notable Black Americans whose work affected the modern death penalty era. The fourth and final entry in this series is lawyer and civil rights activist Elaine Jones, former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and counsel of record in Furman v. Georgia.

Elaine Jones was born in Norfolk, Virginia on March 2, 1944, the daughter of a railroad porter and a school teacher. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1965 and a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1970, becoming the first African-American woman to graduate from that school. Her life and career was defined by a series of “firsts.” She was one of the first Black women to defend death row prisoners, the first African American to serve on the Board of Governors of the American Bar Association, and the first woman to lead the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF). 

Ms. Jones was determined to pursue civil rights and equal justice since childhood, when she experienced the racism of the Jim Crow South, including being forced to ride in the back of the bus and seeing how the all-white police force treated her community. She told The Washington Post in 2003, “You’re a little girl, but you can see. There was a fear that pervaded the African American community, and I knew it was wrong.”

Elaine Jones joined LDF upon graduating law school in 1970, turning down a job at a prestigious Wall Street firm in favor of pursuing civil rights work. During her early years at the LDF, Ms. Jones defended several death row inmates. In a C-SPAN interview conducted by civil rights leader Julian Bond, she said that authorities in the South, where most of her work took place, “couldn’t believe it” when she introduced herself as the lawyer on the case. 
 

Only 2 years into her career at LDF in 1972, Elaine Jones became the counsel of record for the U.S. Supreme Court case that would suspend the death penalty in the United States, Furman v. Georgia. The Court ruled in Furman that the application of the death penalty was unconstitutionally arbitrary. 

After the Furman decision, Ms. Jones took on several employment discrimination cases, representing those who  claimed to have been harmed by racial bias in their workplace. Some of these included Patterson v. American Tobacco Co. and Swint v. Pullman Standard, exceptionally high-profile cases involving some of the nation’s largest employers. 

In 1993, Elaine Jones became the first woman to be appointed as president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. This position allowed her to expand the LDF’s reach into several realms, including environmental justice and health care. Anthony Amsterdam, a law professor at New York University who worked with Ms. Jones throughout her career at LDF and argued Furman v. Georgia at the U.S. Supreme Court, said, “She has a remarkable combination of legal talent, a powerful moral compass and a dedication and willingness to give of herself… . She was born for this kind of work.” She was presented the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award in 2000 by President Bill Clinton, as well as the Jefferson Medal of Freedom from the University of Virginia.