The Joseph N. Green Lecture Series

"A Forum for Justice"

The Joseph N. Green Lecture Series presents “A Forum for Justice” featuring attorney Elaine R. Jones, former President and Director-Council of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF).  

A Norfolk native, Ms. Jones graduated from Booker T. Washington High School.  She graduated with honors from Howard University, earning her BA degree in political science.  After working as an English teacher in Turkey for two years while serving in the Peace Corps she was admitted to the University of Virginia Law School as one of only seven women and two blacks admitted to the class of 1970.  In 1970 she became the first black woman to graduate from the law school.

Having worked for the LDF for all but two years of her legal career, Jones is a legal powerhouse, civil rights attorney, and history maker,   One of her first assignments with the LDF involved litigating death-penalty cases in the Deep South; she was counsel of record in Furman v. Georgia, the landmark case in which the Supreme Court struck down death penalty statutes in 37 states, a decision that held for 12 years   During her  tenure with the LDF organization, she was instrumental in the passage of 1982’s Voting Rights Act Amendment, 1988’s Fair Housing Act and Civil Rights Restoration Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1991.  In 1993 Jones became the first female president and defense counsel for the LDF, a position she held until 2004.  

Jones was elected to the American Bar Association Board of Governors in 1989, the first African American to do so.  She was named one of Ebony Magazine’s “10 Most Powerful Black Women” in 2001.  and  has received 13 honorary degrees.