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Viewing For Judge Nathaniel Jones Announced

Tana Weingartner
/
WVXU
Retired federal Judge Nathaniel R. Jones was awarded the NAACP Spingarn Medal in 2016.

A Bond Hill church hosts the viewings for Judge Nathaniel Jones this week. Jones died over the weekend of congestive heart failure. He was 93.

Corinthian Baptist Church at Reading Road and Tennessee will hold viewings Wednesday from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., and Thursday from 9 a.m. to noon.

Jones was the first African American to be an assistant United States attorney in Ohio. He was general counsel for the NAACP where he led the fight against school segregation. In 1979, Jones was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit by President Jimmy Carter.

In 2016, he received the NAACP's highest award, the Spingarn Medal. During a panel discussion at the NAACP convention in Cincinnati that July, he criticized Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and John Roberts for their jurisprudence, and Congress for its failure to correct the removal of Section Five from the Voting Rights Act.

That same year, he published his memoir "Answering the Call: An Autobiography of the Modern Struggle to End Racial Discrimination in America."

Eric H. Kearney, president & CEO of the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky African American Chamber of Commerce released a statement Monday afternoon. "To our community, Nathaniel Jones was a judge, lawyer, educator and determined defender of social justice. To his family, he was a dedicated father and grandfather. To me, Judge Jones was a mentor, law school professor and inspiration. Our region, our nation and our world are a better place thanks to his contributions. Judge Jones will be dearly missed."

Bill Rinehart started his radio career as a disc jockey in 1990. In 1994, he made the jump into journalism and has been reporting and delivering news on the radio ever since.