Jones, Doug (1953-…), was a member of the United States Senate from 2017 to 2021. Jones, a Democrat from the Southern state of Alabama , defeated Republican candidate Roy Moore in a special election. Prior to his Senate campaign, Jones had been best known for successfully prosecuting two of the suspects in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing , a racially motivated terrorist act that killed four African American girls in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama.
Gordon Douglas Jones was born in Fairfield, Alabama, on May 4, 1953. He received a bachelor of science degree from the University of Alabama and a law degree from Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law. After receiving his law degree, Jones worked as staff counsel (lawyer) to Senator Howell Heflin. In 1980, Jones was named an assistant U.S. attorney in Birmingham. He later worked as an attorney in private practice.
In 1997, President Bill Clinton nominated Jones to serve as the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. The U.S. Senate confirmed the nomination. In 2001, Jones became the lead prosecutor in the cases against Tommy Blanton and Bobby Cherry, men accused of the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. Jones prosecuted the cases in state court after he was named a special state attorney general. Blanton was found guilty in 2001, and Cherry was convicted the following year.
Jones returned to work as an attorney in private practice later in 2001. In February 2017, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions resigned his Senate seat after taking office as attorney general of the United States, the nation’s chief law officer. Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange , a Republican, was appointed to fill Sessions’s seat until a special election could be held that autumn. In August, Jones won the Democratic Party’s nomination to contest the seat. In September, Strange lost a Republican primary run-off election to Roy Moore, a former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama.
In December, Jones defeated Moore in the special election contest. Jones’s victory and subsequent seating in office marked the first time since 1997 that a Democrat—Heflin—had represented Alabama in the U.S. Senate. Moore’s candidacy had been hampered by accusations that he had pursued relationships and engaged in sexual misconduct with several teenage girls while he was a district attorney in his 30’s. Jones benefited from a strong get-out-the-vote operation. His term extended to 2021, when Sessions’s Senate term was to expire. In 2020, Jones lost an election for a full Senate term to Republican Tommy Tuberville.
In 2019, a book that Jones wrote, Bending Toward Justice: The Birmingham Church Bombing That Changed the Course of Civil Rights, was published. The book discusses the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church and includes Jones’s role in prosecuting the bombers.
