Black Writers' Guild Black History Month Presentation - "The Life & Times of Alberta Jones" presented by Keenan Conigland

On Saturday, February 1, 2020 I attended the Black Writers’ Guild Black History Month presentation – “The Life & Times of Alberta Jones” presented by Keenan Conigland (screenwriter and author) via video. What drew me to this talk was not only was Alberta Jones one of the first African-American woman to pass the bar, the first female city attorney in Jefferson County and Muhammad Ali’s first attorney (they lived not too far from each other) but the fact that she was murdered in 1965 and the case remains unsolved. At the time of her death, Ms. Jones was thirty-four years old and a civil rights pioneer in the prime of her life.

Mr. Conigland talked about how he discovered this story via the New York Times and how he pursued getting the life rights from the family.  He is in the process of bringing this story to the screen and walked the audience through knowing and protecting our rights as a screenwriter (e.g. copywriting creative content, negotiating with the movie studios, etc.) until it’s completely out of our hands because that will eventually happen once the studio takes over. At the bare minimum, we should angle to be a producer on the film.

Anyway, Mr. Conigland’s presentation piqued my interest into doing some research on Ms. Jones. What I found was she was definitely a woman ahead of her time having registered thousands of African-American voters in the 1960s and paving the way for banning racial discrimination by local theaters and lunch counters. She was a strong advocate for the disenfranchised whose work could have been so much more had it not been for the cowards who brutally beat her and threw her into the Ohio river to drown.

Despite witnesses having seen two black males drag a screaming woman into a car like the one Ms. Jones was driving according to police records, nothing happened.  Even when the police got a break in 2008 after a match on a fingerprint was found on the car Ms. Jones was driving, interviewed the man who the fingerprint belonged to, heard his flimsy explanation…still nothing happened.

At the end of the day, Ms. Jones was caught in the crosshairs of folks who may have wanted to silence her for one or more reasons. So, it’s no surprise this murder case will forever remain unsolved. In the meantime, I’d like to say kudos to Mr. Conigland for taking the helm of trying to bring this story to the forefront of a pioneer who left this earth too soon. 

Alberta Jones

Keenan Conigland

L to R: Me, Odessa Rose & Jeanna Tillery

L to R: Janice Adams, Jeanna Tillery, Me, Odessa Rose & Cherrie Woods