Walter B. Jones

Walter Burgwyn Jones (1888-1963) was a circuit court judge, state legislator, attorney, and writer from Montgomery, Montgomery County. As a judge and avowed White supremacist, he played key roles in several notable civil rights cases attempting to stymie the advancement of civil rights in Alabama. An active community member, he served on numerous boards and held active leadership roles in many community organizations. In 1928, he founded the Jones School of Law at Faulkner University, named for his father, former Alabama governor Thomas Goode Jones.

Jones was born in Montgomery on October 16, 1888, to Thomas Goode Jones and Georgena Caroline Bird Jones. He was one of 13 children. During Jones’s early childhood, his father served as Alabama’s governor from 1890 to 1894. A central figure in Alabama politics, Thomas Goode Jones had been a Confederate officer, a railroad lawyer, a state legislator, and later a federal judge. Walter was educated in both public and private schools in Montgomery and attended Alabama Polytechnic Institute (present-day Auburn University) in Auburn, Lee County. In 1909, he graduated with honors from the University of Alabama’s School of Law in Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County.

After graduation, Jones returned to Montgomery to practice law. Beginning in 1911, he served as secretary for his father, who was then the U.S. circuit judge for Alabama’s middle and northern districts. In 1920, Jones was elected as judge of the 15th Judicial Circuit Court in Montgomery County, and he was made presiding judge in 1935. He continued to win reelection for this office for the rest of his life.

Jones was an avowed segregationist and White supremacist. In his 1957 article in the March 4 Montgomery Advertiser, “I Speak for the White Race,” Jones laid out his beliefs regarding the superiority of the White race and the importance of segregation, which were reprinted in other newspapers. The article appeared in his weekly column “Off the Bench,” which he began in 1924 and would continue to run until 1963, with the exception of some years in the 1940s.

Thomas Goode Jones House

Indeed, Jones was also known for several key judicial rulings attempting to prevent the progress of civil rights. In 1956, he signed an injunction to bar the NAACP from operating in the state of Alabama. Part of then-attorney general John Patterson’s massive resistance strategy, the order cited a rarely enforced law stating that out-of-state organizations must register in the state as “foreign” corporations; the law had once been applied to ban to Ku Klux Klan from operating in the state of New York. The NAACP had been at the center of the civil rights movement in the 1950s; in particular, NAACP organizers played a key role the Montgomery bus boycott that was still in progress at the time of the court order. Jones signed the order without a public hearing, and without any prior notice to the NAACP. To strengthen the power of the injunction, Jones added a clause preventing the organization from filing any future documents with the state of Alabama, an action that essentially rendered the order permanent.

The quick response of Ruby Hurley, who was then the only paid employee in the NAACP’s southeastern office in Birmingham, Jefferson County, allowed for the hasty relocation of the regional office and its membership records to Atlanta, Georgia, where the NAACP was able to continue its work. In 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the state in NAACP v. Alabama, but numerous appeals and Jones’s obstruction slowed the organization’s return to Alabama until some eight years later, after he had died. Jones’s piece, “I Speak for the White Race,” was introduced in the trial as evidence of his racial bias.

Also in 1956, Jones received one electoral vote in the election for U.S. president. Faithless elector W. F. Turner submitted his vote for Jones rather than voting for Adlai Stevenson, who had won Alabama’s popular vote. Commentors note that Jones’s reputation as an avid segregationist played a sizable role in Turner’s decision.

In 1960, Jones played a key role in the U.S. Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan, which ruled that public officials must prove “actual malice” in libel cases against media outlets. In the original case, Lester B. Sullivan, a city commissioner in Montgomery, claimed that an outside advertisement run by the New York Times had damaged his reputation. The ad, which criticized the city of Montgomery for its treatment of civil rights protestors, contained some inadvertent factual errors. After Jones, who oversaw the case, heavily swayed the jury’s decision by instructing them that the advertisement’s statements were, in fact, libelous and false, the jury ruled that the New York Times owed Sullivan $500,000 in punitive damages, then the highest damages ever awarded for a libel case in Alabama. The case was challenged and rose to the Supreme Court, which voted unanimously in favor of the New York Times, ruling that, in libel cases involving public figures, media outlets would only owe libel damages if they knowingly printed inaccurate or potentially inaccurate information.    

Jones’s judicial career would once again intersect with the civil rights movement on May 19, 1961, the day before the Freedom Riders were scheduled to arrive in Montgomery, when Jones issued an injunction banning them from entering the city. When the group arrived, they were met by a violent mob. The next day, the court issued an order for the arrest of the Freedom Riders, citing their violation of Jones’s injunction.  

In addition to his judicial career, Jones held numerous other civic roles. He served in the state legislature from 1919-20. Within the same two years, he served as vice president of Montgomery’s Board of Commissioners and as a member of the Alabama State Highway Commission. In 1922, he served in the Democratic State Convention. In 1942, he served as Chairman of the World War II Alabama War Manpower Commission.

Throughout his life, Jones was an active member in the Montgomery community. He served on the boards of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, the Montgomery County Library, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, the Union Bank and Trust, the Montgomery Boys Club, and the Working Woman’s Home Association. In 1928, he founded the Jones School of Law, named for his father, at Faulkner University; he served as president throughout the ensuing decades. He served as president of the Alabama State Bar in 1954 and 1955. He was involved in Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Knights of Pythias, and the Freemasons. A longtime member of Montgomery’s St. John’s Episcopal Church, he taught the Young Men’s Bible Class for 25 years and served as senior warden. 

In addition to “Off the Bench,” Jones was a prolific writer who authored several books, including political treatises and textbooks, as well as a book of family genealogy. In 1940, he founded Alabama Lawyer, the Alabama State Bar’s official publication. In 1945, he founded The Alabama Bible Society Quarterly, a publication for which he served as editor for more than a decade.

Jones was a Confederate history enthusiast who frequently honored his father’s heritage as a Confederate war veteran, and his writings often addressed events from the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. He was an active member in the Sons of Confederate Veterans. In 1920, he addressed the Brannon Historical Society of the Woman’s College of Montgomery (present-day Huntingdon College). In “Alabama Secedes from the Union,” he describes in glowing terms the vote for secession, while also praising those who continued the fight for White supremacy after the war. In 1959, he edited the anthology Confederate War Poems.

Jones never married or had children. He died on August 1, 1963, after an extended illness, at the age of 74. Until then, he lived in his father’s home in downtown Montgomery, which later was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, in 1978. It was empty for many years following his death but later purchased and renovated by a law firm. He was interred in Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery. The University of Alabama Special Collections holds numerous writings of and materials relating to Jones.