Biography
The Reverend Ashton Bryant Jones, a minister from San Gabriel, California, was imprisoned in Atlanta during protests against church segregation. A November 20, 1963 SNCC news release reported that he had been held in Fulton County Jail since August 28 under $20,000 bail while appealing a conviction arising from accompanying an interracial group to First Baptist Church. He had been tried in August and given a nominal eighteen-month sentence and a $1,000 fine. Attorney Howard Moore represented him, and Emory University students organized a committee seeking his freedom. The release also reported earlier protest jailings, but their individual custody periods are unresolved. His final release date is not established.
The original SNCC release additionally reports that Jones undertook a one-month hunger strike and that his detention pending appeal since August 28 was treated as dead time not credited against the sentence. Of the nominal eighteen months, six were at hard labor. Motions for a new trial were scheduled for November 22, 1963; the release does not report that hearing’s result or physical discharge. Senator Thomas Kuchel asked the Justice Department to investigate his arrest and imprisonment. Source: https://www.crmvet.org/docs/pr/631120_sncc_pr_atl_jail.pdf#page=1
Deane Mary Mowrer’s July–August 1975 Tivoli report identifies Reverend Ashton Jones as a presenter at the Peacemakers conference. It describes his longstanding civil-rights and peace work, his meeting with Gandhi in India and his work with Martin Luther King during the civil-rights struggle. This is attributed biographical testimony and later activity, not a fresh custody episode. Source: https://merton.bellarmine.edu/files/original/e47d99685e4e417d411cf7ee99fd06d6cfad4111.pdf#page=7
National Guardian, April 3, 1961: The San Francisco-to-Moscow peace-walk log says marchers stayed with Reverend Ashton Jones in San Gabriel during the December 27 entry and identifies him as a pacifist minister previously jailed and beaten in the South for promoting integration. This is earlier biographical context preceding his separately documented 1963 Atlanta confinement; individual dates and total time in those earlier jailings are not supplied. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/national-guardian/1961-04-03-13-25-nat-guardian.pdf#page=3
The Reverend Ashton Bryant Jones, a minister from San Gabriel, California, was imprisoned in Atlanta during protests against church segregation. A November 20, 1963 SNCC news release reported that he had been held in Fulton County Jail since August 28 under $20,000 bail while appealing a conviction arising from accompanying an interracial group to First Baptist Church. He had been tried in August and given a nominal eighteen-month sentence and a $1,000 fine. Attorney Howard Moore represented him, and Emory University students organized a committee seeking his freedom. The release also reported earlier protest jailings, but their individual custody periods are unresolved. His final release date is not established.
U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Editorial Unit: Demonstrations summaries, June–September 1963, PDF page 22; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee news release, 67-Year-Old Minister Held in Atlanta Jail, November 20, 1963, PDF page 1.
Source-reported institution: Fulton County Jail.
