Professional Career
In 1947, she was admitted to the Illinois State Bar. The same year, Jewel became a trial lawyer for the Legal Aid Bureau of Chicago. She formed a law firm in Chicago in 1949 with her first husband, John W. Rogers, Sr. In 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Jewel as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. She served in that role until 1958.
In July 1960, she was a delegate-at-large to the Republican National Convention. She gave the seconding speech for Nixon’s nomination to be the Republican candidate for President during the 1960 Presidential election. In 1961, she started a new law firm in Chicago with her father and second husband called Stradford, Lafontant and Lafontant. In 1963, she became the first black woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court of the United States. Her case, Beatrice Lynum v. The State of Illinois set the precedent for the landmark Miranda v. The State of Arizona case in 1966. She ran unsuccessfully for Illinois judicial elections in 1962 and 1970.
She sat on many corporate and non-profits boards, including the boards of Jewel Companies, Trans World Airlines Mobil Corporation, Revlon, the Illinois Humane Society, Howard University, and Oberlin College.
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