WWII veteran and civil rights lawyer Johnnie Jones dies
BATON ROUGE, La. — Johnnie A. Jones Sr., a Louisiana civil legal rights attorney and Planet War II veteran who was wounded during the D-Working day invasion of Normandy, has died. Jones was 102 yrs old.
Jones’ goddaughter, Mada McDonald, instructed WAFB-Tv that Jones died Saturday at the Louisiana War Veterans’ Household in Jackson, Louisiana.
Jones was born Nov. 30, 1919 in Laurel Hill, Louisiana and elevated on Rosemound Plantation by his moms and dads, who farmed 73 acres of land but insisted that their son get an training. He graduated from Southern University and then was drafted in 1942. He grew to become the Army’s 1st African American warrant officer. He was assigned to a device responsible for unloading equipment and supplies on to Normandy.
In the course of the June 6, 1944 invasion — as Jones arrived ashore on Omaha Beach — he came under hearth from a German sniper. Jones grabbed his weapon and returned hearth, a memory that haunted him all his lifetime.
“I still see him, I see him each individual night time,” Jones told The Linked Press in a 2019 job interview.
Jones pretty much under no circumstances produced it to the beachhead that working day. His ship hit a mine, and he was blown from the second deck to the initially. The explosion, “blew me sky superior into the air,” Jones was quoted as declaring in an Office of Veterans Affairs job interview. Later, Jones got strike with shrapnel when he did not strike the ground rapid sufficient during a bomb attack.
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By the conclusion of Planet War II, additional than a million African People in america were being in uniform which include the famed Tuskegee Airmen and the 761st Tank Battalion. But they returned from the war only to experience discrimination back again property.
Jones instructed the AP in 2019 that right after returning from Europe, he had to shift to the back again of a bus crammed with fellow troopers as it crossed the Mason-Dixon line separating North from South.
“I could not sit with the troopers I had been on the battlefield with. I experienced to go to the back of the bus,” stated Jones. In addition, even though touring to New Orleans to get shrapnel removed from his neck, Jones was pulled above by a white law enforcement officer and roughed up.
These types of occasions served as a phone to action, to struggle racism. He acquired a law degree and was recruited in 1953 to enable organize a bus boycott in Baton Rouge and protect the participants. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King utilized that event to system his bigger bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, several a long time afterwards.
Jones also defended pupils arrested in the course of sit-ins as civil rights protests gained momentum in the South. His car or truck was bombed two times.
The French federal government in 2020 introduced Jones with the Legion of Honor award for his Planet War II provider.
It took decades for Jones’ sacrifice and courage for the duration of Entire world War II to be regarded. In 2021 — at age 101 — he finally been given a Purple Heart, which is awarded to U.S. services customers killed or wounded in action.
The Louisiana Digital Library has an job interview with Jones on its web-site.
Funeral arrangements are pending, McDonald informed the Tv station.