Civil Disorders (the Kerner Commission). Following his term with the Kerner Commission, Jones returned to private practice with the firm of Goldberg & Jones in Youngstown. In 1969, he was asked to serve as general counsel of the NAACP by executive director Roy Wilkins. The following year, Jones was honored by more than 600 dignitaries at an NAACP recognition banquet held in Youngstown. In a keynote address, he described the situation of African Americans in the following terms: "We still live in the basement of the great society. We must keep plodding until we get what we are striving for". For the next nine years, Jones directed all NAACP litigation. In addition to personally arguing several cases in the United States Supreme Court, he coordinated national efforts to end northern school segregation, to defend affirmative action, and to inquire into discrimination against black servicemen in the United States military. He also successfully coordinated the NAACP's defense on First Amendment grounds in the Mississippi Boycott case and won Reed v. Rhodes, which desegregated Cleveland-area schools. However, he was also the losing attorney in Milliken v. Bradley, which restricted urban/suburban desegregation efforts. Judicial career and beyond President Jimmy Carter on August 28, 1979, nominated Jones, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit vacated by Judge John Weld Peck II. The United States Senate confirmed his nomination on October 4, 1979, and he received his commission on October 5, 1979. He took his judicial oath on October 15, 1979. He assumed senior status on May 13, 1995. His service terminated on March 30, 2002, when he retired. While on the federal bench, in addition to hearing cases, Judge Jones taught at Harvard Law School and at the University of Cincinnati College of Law. He also made many trips to South Africa. He spoke against the legal underpinnings of apartheid, became one of the observers for the first democratic elections in 1993, and later consulted with drafters of the South African constitution. After his retirement, Jones became a Senior Counsel in the Cincinnati office of Blank Rome LLP, also serving as its Chief Diversity and Inclusion officer. He also wrote a memoir, ''Answering the Call: An Autobiography of the Modern Struggle to End Racial Discrimination in America'' (2016), with a foreword by Harvard professor Evelyn Brooks Higgenbotham. On May 6, 2003, the second federal courthouse established in