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Ms.

Elaine R. Jones

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Area
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Specialty
Law
Elected
2025

Litigator and civil rights activist Elaine R. Jones served as the President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund (LDF) from 1993 to 2004. She was the first woman to head the organization.

Born in Norfolk, Virginia, Ms. 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 eight, 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, 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. 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.

She turned down offers to join one of Wall Street’s most prestigious firms after her graduation in 1970 and instead joined the Legal Defense Fund’s staff. With the exception of two years as Special Assistant to the United States Secretary of Transportation, she remained with LDF and spent more than a decade in LDF’s Washington office litigating and directing legislative, judicial, and public policy initiatives.

Recognition for her advocacy work includes the first Brennan Award of the DC Bar Association, the Hannah G. Solomon Award of The National Council of Jewish Women, Mickey Leland Public Service Award of the Congressional Black Caucus, Ida B. Wells-Barnett Justice Award of the Metropolitan Bar Association in New York City, Brennan Legacy Award of the Brennan Center, American Lawyer Lifetime Achievement Award, National Newspaper Publishers Association’s First Public Service Award, and the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award.

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