Nathaniel R. Jones - Legal Career

Legal Career

After four years in private practice, Judge Jones served as Executive Director of the Fair Employment Practices Commission. In 1962, he became the first African American to be appointed as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio in Cleveland. He held that position until his 1967 appointment as Assistant General Counsel to President Lyndon B. Johnson's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner Commission). Following his term with the Kerner Commission, Judge Jones returned to private practice with the firm of Goldberg & Jones in Youngstown.

In 1969, he was asked to serve as general counsel of the NAACP by executive director Roy Wilkins. The following year, Judge Jones was honored by more than 600 dignitaries at an NAACP recognition banquet held in Youngstown. In a keynote address, he described the situation of African Americans in the following terms: "We still live in the basement of the great society. We must keep plodding until we get what we are striving for". For the next nine years, Judge Jones directed all NAACP litigation. In addition to personally arguing several cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, he coordinated national efforts to end northern school segregation, to defend affirmative action, to inquire into discrimination against black servicemen in the U.S. military, and successfully coordinated the NAACP's defense on First Amendment grounds in the Mississippi Boycott case.