#BTBlackHistoryMonth – Jones an agitator for civil rights, urban renewal

Thomas Russell Jones Jr. made an indelible mark on the judiciary in the United States of America, as well as on the civil rights movement in that country. His was a consciousness that owed much of its development on being nurtured in a Barbadian home.

He was born August 5, 1913 in Brooklyn, New York City, to Thomas Russell Jones, Sr., a podiatrist, and Mabel (Ward) Jones, both immigrants from St. Lucy, Barbados.

Jones graduated from St. John’s University and from St. John’s University School of Law. He was admitted to the bar in 1938. He worked as an activist in anti-fascism, and in 1941 enlisted in the U.S. Army. That same year, he married his Bertha K. Jones, with whom he had a son, David, and a daughter, Margaret.

As a first lieutenant, he participated in the Normandy invasion in 1944. Upon returning to New York, Jones became chief council for the New York NAACP branch, mainly involved in cases of police brutality.

In 1955, Jones defended three Chinese immigrant workers who had been convicted and sentenced to prison for sedition for “helping Communist China” because they had been sending money home to relatives there.

The United States Supreme Court declined to hear their appeal. In 1980, Jones delivered a speech in Beijing about the case and the American legal system.

Jones was a Democratic member of the New York State Assembly (Kings County, 10th District) in 1963 and 1964. In November 1964, he was elected to the New York City Civil Court, and in November 1967 to the New York Supreme Court.

Jones worked with U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy in an effort to improve living conditions in the slums in New York.

Underestimating Kennedy’s genuine desire to help, and mindful that many other outsiders had come to Bedford– Stuyvesant, examined conditions there, then left without doing anything to help, Jones said cynically: “I’m weary of study, Senator.

Weary of speeches, weary of promises that aren’t kept…

The Negro people are angry, Senator, and judge that I am, I’m angry, too. No one is helping us.”
Jones was part of a pioneering generation of black lawyers, clergymen and other professionals who transformed Brooklyn politics after World War II by agitating for civil rights, running for office and pressing for governmental action to improve the squalid conditions of urban slums.

Jones became the first president of Kennedy’s bipartisan grassroots community effort, one of two restoration companies (one for community leaders and one for businessmen) that Kennedy helped found for Bedford–Stuyvesant.

The objective was to build health clinics, redevelop housing, build parks and playgrounds, spur commercial activity and investment, and increase employment and political participation amongst the residents.

In 1967, Jones helped found the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, which grew out of the initial Kennedy effort. The 1968 assassination of Kennedy devastated Jones, and it led him to focus more on his judicial career instead of community rebuilding. He retired from the bench in 1985 but remained active in legal circles. With his wife, he founded a nonprofit group to help poor children.

Jones died at his home in Brooklyn on October 27, 2006, at the age of 93. (Adapted)