Judge Jones was a lawyer, jurist, academic and public servant. He served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit for 23 years up to his retirement in 2002 and was subsequently employed as counsel in the Cincinnati office of Blank Rome LLP. Judge Jones’s record of community and academic service includes teaching at the Harvard Law School and serving as general counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, inter alia coordinating legal efforts to end school segregation in the northern United States. His efforts in civil and human rights took him to countries around the world and in 1994 he served on the team of observers for the first democratic elections in South Africa.