One of his last stage roles was in a 1991 Broadway production of Mule Bone by Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, another important writer of the Harlem Renaissance. His last film was Rain Without Thunder (1993). Although blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s due to involvement with leftist groups, Jones was ultimately honored with a lifetime achievement award by the U.S. National Black Theatre Festival. Personal life Jones was married three times. As a young man, he married Ruth Connolly (died 1986) in 1929; they had a son, James Earl Jones. Jones and Connolly separated before James was born in 1931, and the couple divorced in 1933. Jones did not come to know his son until the mid-1950s. Jones married two other times, to Jumelle Jones from 1938 to 1950, and Ruth Williams from 1960 until her death in 1981. He fathered a second son, Matthew Earl Jones. Jones died on September 7, 2006, in Englewood, New Jersey, from natural causes at age 96. Work Theatre Filmography Television References External links Earl Jones Institute website Robert Earl Jones profile, University of Wisconsin's Actors Studio audio collection 1910 births 2006 deaths Actors Studio alumni American male film actors American male stage actors Male actors from Mississippi Hollywood blacklist African-American boxers Works Progress Administration workers African-American male actors American male television actors 20th-century American male actors People from Tate County, Mississippi American male boxers Boxers from Mississippi 20th-century African-American sportspeople 21st-century African-American people