Elaine Jones (1993–2004)

From 1993 to 2004, Elaine R. Jones served as the President and Director-Counsel of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF). When Jones took the helm of LDF in 1993, she became the first woman to head the organization. She brought with her vast experience as a litigator and civil rights activist, as well as a passion for fairness and equality that dates back to her childhood.

Born in Norfolk, Virginia, Jones learned about the realities of racism and the importance of idealism from her mother, a college-educated school teacher, and her father, a Pullman porter and a member of the nation’s first Black trade union. From the age of 8, she knew she wanted to be a lawyer and to commit her life to the pursuit of equal justice.

After graduating with honors in political science from Howard University, Jones joined the Peace Corps and became one of the first Black people to serve in Turkey. This began a long series of “firsts” in her career. Following her two-year Peace Corps stint, she became the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Virginia School of Law, and subsequently the first African American to serve on the Board of Governors of the American Bar Association.

Jones was invited to join one of Wall Street’s most prestigious firms after her graduation in 1970. She turned it down to pursue the goal she had chosen in her youth, and instead joined the LDF’s staff. With the exception of two years as Special Assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, she remained with LDF. She spent the next 14 years in LDF’s Washington office, litigating and directing LDF’s legislative, judicial, and public policy initiatives.

In her early years at LDF, Jones continued to blaze trails, becoming one of the first Black women to defend death row inmates. Only two years out of law school, she was counsel of record in Furman v. Georgia, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case led by Anthony Amsterdam that abolished the death penalty in 37 states for a period of five years. She also argued numerous employment discrimination cases, including class actions against some of the nation’s largest employers, such as Patterson v. American Tobacco Co., Stallworth v. Monsanto, and Swint v. Pullman-Standard, which she argued before the Supreme Court.

Jones holds 13 honorary degrees and the Jefferson Medal of Freedom, the highest honor awarded by the University of Virginia (which does not award honorary degrees). She also has received the recognition of many organizations, including the Secretary’s Award of the Department of Transportation, the first recipient of the Brennan Award of the D.C. Bar Association, the Hannah G. Solomon Award of the National Council of Jewish Women, the Mickey Leland Public Service Award of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Justice Award of the Metropolitan Bar Association in New York City, the Brennan Legacy Award of the Brennan Center, the American Lawyer Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s First Public Service Award, the People for the American Way’s 2001 Democracy Award, and the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession Margaret Brent Award. In December 2000, President Bill Clinton presented her with the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award.