Alberta Jones: The Trailblazing Lawyer and Civil Rights Leader Whose Murder Remains Unsolved
- Anna Avis
- Aug 13
- 6 min read
"If she had been a white woman prosecutor, they would have turned over heaven and hell to solve this."— Flora Shanklin, sister of Alberta Jones
On the morning of August 5, 1965, the Ohio River gave up a terrible secret. Floating in its waters was the body of Alberta O. Jones, a pioneering African American lawyer, civil rights activist, and the first attorney for a young boxer named Cassius Clay, later Muhammad Ali. She was only 34 years old. The autopsy revealed she had been beaten, left unconscious, and thrown into the river to drown.
Her murder shocked Louisville, Kentucky, but the way the investigation was handled, and the fact that the case remains unsolved nearly six decades later, has left many convinced that racism and sexism played a decisive role in the lack of justice.
Early Life and Education
Alberta Odell Jones was born November 12, 1930, in Louisville, Kentucky, to Sarah (Sadie) Frances Crawford and Odell Jones. She grew up in a segregated America, but from an early age, she excelled academically. Jones attended Louisville Central High School and then the Louisville Municipal College for Negroes, which merged with the University of Louisville in 1951. She graduated third in her class, a sign of her determination and intellect.
In 1956, Jones broke a major barrier by becoming the first African American to attend the University of Louisville Law School. Facing an unwelcoming environment, she transferred to Howard University School of Law, graduating fourth in her class in 1958. The next year, she became one of the first African American women to pass the Kentucky Bar.
By 1959, Jones had opened her own law practice in downtown Louisville, a rarity at the time for any woman, let alone a Black woman in the segregated South.
A Legal Mind for a Champion
One of Jones’s first high-profile clients was a young, charismatic boxer named Cassius Clay. In 1960, she negotiated the contract for his first professional fight, ensuring he received fair terms. Clay would later become Muhammad Ali, but Jones’s role in protecting his early career has often been overlooked.
She was a respected member of the Fall City Bar Association, the Louisville Bar Association, the American Bar Association, and the Eta Zeta Chapter of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority. Beyond her legal work, she was deeply committed to civil rights.
Political Activism and Civil Rights Work
Jones’s passion for justice extended far beyond the courtroom. She founded the Independent Voter’s Association, registering 6,000 African American voters in Louisville. She rented voting machines and even ran classes in her office on how to vote for your candidate. Her grassroots organising helped shift political power in the city. In the 1961 elections, Black voters played a decisive role in ousting the mayor and several aldermen. By 1963, the new administration passed the first public accommodations ordinance in the South, a landmark victory in the fight against segregation.
Jones also marched in Louisville’s 1963 civil rights demonstrations and attended the March on Washington that August.
Breaking More Barriers
In 1964, Alberta Jones shattered yet another glass ceiling when she became Louisville’s first female city attorney, an achievement made even more remarkable by the fact that she was also the first African American to hold the post. Less than a year later, in February 1965, she reached another historic milestone, being appointed prosecutor for the Domestic Relations Court. Once again, she was the first woman and the first person of colour to serve in that role in Jefferson County.
Her appointment was groundbreaking in every sense, not only because of the barriers she overcame, but because of the courtroom realities she faced. The cases she prosecuted were almost exclusively against white men accused of spousal abuse, a striking reversal of the racial and gender power structures of the era. In a society where Black women were often denied both legal recourse and authority, Jones now stood in a position to hold white men accountable under the law.
For many in Louisville’s Black community, this was more than symbolic, it was a quiet yet powerful shift in justice. Jones approached her work with the same diligence and professionalism that had carried her through law school and the civil rights movement, refusing to be intimidated by defendants who, in another setting, might never have expected to answer to a Black woman in a court of law.
The Night Alberta Jones Was Killed
The last hours of Alberta Jones’s life began in the most ordinary way, at home with her family. On the night of August 4, 1965, she was sitting on the couch reading an article about the assassination of President Kennedy. Her sister Flora Shanklin went upstairs to bed, leaving Alberta downstairs. At around 10pm, the phone rang. On the line was her friend, Gladys Wyckoff, asking Jones to meet her to discuss a legal matter, a lawsuit against a beautician. Jones explained that as a prosecutor she didn’t handle that type of case, but Wyckoff persisted.
According to Flora, Wyckoff teased Jones, saying she had become “uppity” since taking her new position. Alberta, conscious of how her success might be perceived by friends, eventually agreed to meet. She told her mother she would be fine and left the house, it would be the last time her family saw her alive.
Witnesses, the Bridge, and a Body in the River
In the early hours of August 5, several witnesses reported seeing three men at the Sherman Minton Bridge, struggling with what appeared to be a body before throwing it into the Ohio River. Hours later, Jones’s body was recovered downstream.
An autopsy revealed she had suffered multiple blows to the head and was unconscious before being thrown into the water, where she drowned. Her rented car was found abandoned several blocks from the bridge with blood traces inside. Three years later, in 1968, her purse was discovered hanging from the bridge rail, remarkably still containing her credit cards and chequebook, a sign that robbery had not been the motive.
A Troubling Lack of Progress
From the outset, the investigation into Jones’s murder raised eyebrows. Despite multiple witnesses and a clear timeline of events, no arrests were made. Her family has long maintained that both racism and sexism played a role in the inaction. As Flora Shanklin put it: “If she had been a white woman prosecutor, they would have turned over heaven and hell to solve this. But she was Black. They didn’t do anything about it.”
The lack of urgency was compounded by lost or misplaced evidence. Police collected extensive materials, fingerprints, blood samples, vacuum sweepings from every inch of her car, cigarette butts, clothing, shoes, dentures, and the contents of her purse. By the time renewed interest in the case emerged decades later, much of this evidence had vanished.
The 17-Year-Old Suspect
A major development came in 2008, when the FBI ran a fingerprint from Jones’s rental car through its national database. It matched a man who had been 17 years old at the time of her murder. When detectives questioned him, he agreed to take a polygraph test. According to the police report, “the polygraph examination revealed that deception was indicated” when he was asked about the circumstances surrounding Alberta Jones’s death.
Despite this, the local prosecutor decided in 2010 not to pursue the case. The reasoning given was the loss of critical evidence and the deaths of several investigators and witnesses. For Jones’s family and supporters, this decision felt like a final insult, a refusal to follow through even when new leads emerged.
Renewed Efforts and Frustrations
In 2013, Professor Lee Remington began digging into the case. She uncovered inconsistencies in the official narrative, including claims by police that all the detectives on the case were dead, which was false. One key detective, Carl Corder, was very much alive and provided fresh insight into the original investigation.
In 2017, the case was officially reopened under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, giving federal and local authorities funding to pursue pre-1970 racially motivated murders. Yet, despite this renewed attention and the existence of a named suspect linked by physical evidence, the murder of Alberta Jones remains officially unsolved.
Sources
The Washington Post – Who killed Alberta Jones, Louisville’s first Black woman prosecutor?
Michigan’s Thumb / The Courier-Journal – Researcher: Reopen prosecutor’s 1965 murder
https://www.michigansthumb.com/news/article/Researcher-Reopen-prosecutor-s-1965-murder-9164699.php
PBS Frontline – Unresolved: Episode 4 – The Hope (Transcript)
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/podcast/unresolved/episode-4-the-hope/transcript
