Robert Earl Jones

Robert Earl Jones (February 3, 1910 – September 7, 2006) was an American actor born in northwestern Mississippi, with sources variously citing Senatobia or the nearby town of Coldwater as his birthplace. The son of Robert and Elnora Jones, he left school at an early age to work as a sharecropper before becoming a prizefighter under the name "Battling Bill Stovall," a period during which he served as a sparring partner to Joe Louis. He is also known as the father of actor James Earl Jones, born in 1931 from his first marriage to Ruth Connolly, whom he wed in 1929. The couple separated before James was born and divorced in 1933, and Jones did not establish a relationship with his son until the mid-1950s. He married twice more, to Jumelle Jones from 1938 to 1950 and to Ruth Williams from 1960 until her death in 1981. A second son, Matthew Earl Jones, was also born to him.

Jones's path to the theater began after he joined the Great Migration northward, first settling in Chicago before moving to New York by the 1930s. Through his work with young people in the Works Progress Administration, he encountered Langston Hughes, then a young poet and playwright, who cast him in the 1938 production Don't You Want to Be Free? That early association with Hughes connected Jones to the broader cultural world of the Harlem Renaissance, a movement he remained linked to throughout his life. Years later, one of his final Broadway appearances was in the 1991 production of Mule Bone, a play Hughes had co-written with Zora Neale Hurston.

His Broadway career spanned from 1945 to 1991 and included productions such as All God's Chillun Got Wings, Death of a Salesman, Unexpected Guests, The Gospel at Colonus, and Mule Bone. In The Gospel at Colonus, a 1988 musical adaptation of the Oedipus legend, Jones portrayed Creon. His stage work was recognized with a lifetime achievement award from the U.S. National Black Theatre Festival.

Alongside his theater career, Jones appeared in more than twenty films. His screen debut came in the 1939 race film Lying Lips, written and directed by Oscar Micheaux, in which he played a leading role as a detective. He followed that with another Micheaux production, The Notorious Elinor Lee, in 1940. Subsequent film work included Wild River (1960) and One Potato, Two Potato (1964). In the 1973 Academy Award-winning film The Sting, he played Luther Coleman, an aging grifter whose murder sets the central plot in motion. Later credits included Trading Places (1983), Sleepaway Camp (1983), The Cotton Club (1984), and Witness (1985). His final film appearance was in Rain Without Thunder (1993). He also appeared in episodes of the television series Lou Grant and Kojak.

Despite being blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s due to his involvement with leftist groups, Jones continued working across stage, film, and television for decades. He died on September 7, 2006, in Englewood, New Jersey, at the age of 96.