Volunteers are needed to help prepare the evening meal for the Central Iowa Shelter on Tuesday, March 2.   

If you are able to help, please contact Shirley at shirley.christoffersen@dnr.iowa.gov or call 276-3112

February is Black History Month. Each week the Anti-Racism Task Force will be sharing with you stories of African Americans who have made an impact on our lives and our culture.

Alberta Odell Jones
 
Alberta was born in November, 1930 to Sarah (Sadie) Frances Crawford and Odell Jones, in Louisville, Kentucky.  She attended Louisville Central High School and the Louisville Municipal College for Negroes, which in 1951 merged with the University of Louisville. She graduated third in her class.
 
In 1956 Jones became the first African American to attend the University of Louisville Law School but transferred to Howard University School of Law in her second year. She graduated fourth in her class from Howard in 1958 and the next year she became one of the first African American women to pass the Kentucky Bar. In 1959 she returned to Kentucky and opened a law office in downtown Louisville.
 
Jones was the first attorney for the rising boxer Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), negotiating his first professional fight contract in 1960. She was a member of the Fall City Bar Association, the Louisville Bar Association, and the American Bar Association. She participated in the 1963 civil rights marches in Louisville and in the March on Washington on August 28 of that year.
 
In 1960, Jones became an advocate for increased African American political participation in her hometown. She created the Independent Voter’s Association which registered 6,000 African Americans. She rented voting machines and held classes in her office on “how to vote for your candidate.” Her efforts resulted in a major political shakeup in 1961 when black voters helped oust the mayor and many of the city’s aldermen. Two years later the new city administration enacted the first public accommodations ordinance in the South.
 
Because of her now-considerable political influence, in 1964, Jones was appointed Louisville city attorney, becoming the first woman of any race to hold that position. In February, 1965 she was appointed prosecutor for the Domestic Relations Court, again becoming the first  woman or person of color to hold that position. Ironically, she was responsible for prosecuting mostly white men for spousal abuse.
 
On August 5, 1965, Jones’s body was tossed off Louisville’s Sherman Minton Bridge into the Ohio River. She was only in her mid 30s at the time of her death. An autopsy revealed that Jones had received several blows to the head before being tossed unconscious into the water, where she drowned. Her rented car was found several blocks from the bridge with traces of blood in it, and her purse was found hanging from the bridge three years later.

Witnesses later recalled seeing a body being tossed in the river by three unidentified men on the bridge. The night before her death, Jones’s mother recalled her daughter receiving a phone call from a friend named Gladys Wyckoff who wanted Jones to meet her to discuss a lawsuit against a beautician. Jones left for the meeting but never returned home.

The FBI matched a fingerprint found inside Jones car to a man who was 17-years-old at the time, but prosecutors decided two years later not to pursue the case, citing deaths of key witnesses who later turned out to be alive.

In 2017, the Jones case was reopened, funded by the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which provides $13 million dollars annually to the Department of Justice, the FBI, and U.S. State and local law officials to investigate and prosecute pre-1970 murders. Nonetheless, the murder of Alberta O. Jones remains unsolved.
 

Caregivers at Unity Point can use some encouragement as they prepare for what might be coming. If you would like to offer a word of encouragement, click link here:

https://www.unitypoint.org/desmoines/thank-you-caregivers.aspx