NBL HOF Flipbook - Flipbook - Page 10
ABOUT
ELAINE R. JONES
From 1993 to 2004, Elaine R. Jones served as President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund
(LDF). The first woman to head the organization, she brought with her vast experience as a litigator and civil rights
activist, and a passion for fairness and equality that began with her mother, an elementary and middle school
teacher, and her father, a Pullman porter and member of the nation’s first black
trade union.
After graduating with honors in political science from Howard University, Ms. Jones
joined the Peace Corps and became one of the first African Americans to serve in
Turkey. This began a long series of “firsts” in her career. She was the first black
woman to graduate from the University of Virginia School of Law, and later, the first
African American elected to serve on the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Board
of Governors. Upon graduation from law school, she was invited to join one of Wall
Street’s most prestigious firms. Instead, she joined LDF where, apart from two years
as Special Assistant to the United States Secretary of Transportation, she remained for
32-years of her career, litigating and directing LDF’s legislative, judicial, and public policy initiatives. She blazed
countless trails, becoming one of the first African American women to defend death row inmates. Only two years
out of law school, Ms. Jones was a counsel of record in Furman v. Georgia, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case
that abolished the death penalty in 37 states. She also argued numerous employment discrimination cases, including
class actions against some of the nation’s largest employers (e.g., Patterson v. American Tobacco Co., Stallworth v.
Monsanto, and Swint v. Pullman Standard).
Ms. Jones holds sixteen honorary degrees and the Jefferson Medal of Freedom, University of Virginia’s highest
honor. Additional awards include: first woman recipient of National Bar Association’s C. Francis Stratford Award
(its highest honor), first recipient of DC Bar’s Brennan Award, Washington Bar Association’s Charles Hamilton
Houston Medallion (its highest honor), ABA’s Thurgood Marshall Award, National Council of Jewish Women’s
Hannah G. Solomon Award, American Lawyer Lifetime Achievement Award, National Newspaper Publishers
Association’s First Public Service Award, ABA’s Commission on Women in the Profession (Margaret Brent
Award) and The Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame. In December 2000, President Clinton presented her with the Eleanor
Roosevelt Human Rights Award and, in May 2022, the University of Virginia School of Law dedicated her portrait.
