By Rebecca Goodman
Enquirer staff writer

ROSELAWN - The Rev. James Wesley Jones Sr., founder of the First Coalition for a Just Cincinnati and chief organizer of the boycott against downtown, died Tuesday afternoon at Good Samaritan Hospital. The Roselawn resident was 68.

He had to relinquish leadership of the coalition and end decades of civil rights activism when he suffered a stroke while undergoing a double heart bypass and valve replacement on Good Friday 2002. In a coma for five days, he awoke with diminished vision, slurred speech and partial paralysis. Three months of intense physical therapy at Drake Center helped him walk again, although his eyesight was still poor and his speech slightly slurred.

But he didn't give up preaching at Greater New Mount Moriah Baptist Church, the church he founded in Carthage in 1997.

"I hope I live to be 150," the Rev. Mr. Jones told the Enquirer in an interview last July. "I don't know if I can accept slowing down. It's not in my nature. But I've determined that I will fight until I die."

The Rev. Mr. Jones spent 40 years working to improve the lives of African-Americans in Cincinnati. As pastor of Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in Lincoln Heights for 31 years and first vice president of the Baptist Ministers Conference, he was at the forefront of the fight for equality - in housing, in the workplace, in education and on the streets.

A controversial figure, he appeared often before City Council, prepared with catchy phrases like, "Wipe away this stain on the skirt of the queen. We must be respected. We must be protected. We cannot be neglected."

He drew the ire of whites and blacks for being unrealistic and unrelenting in his criticism of council but made no apologies. "Some black people call him brusque, unpolished. But the truth isn't supposed to be polished," his friend the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth told the Enquirer in 2001.

That summer, the Rev. Mr. Jones led the boycott after the police shooting death of Timothy Thomas and the April riots.

He also called for a boycott in 1979 to protest the use of the .357 Magnum as the police service weapon. "We will let the man know this community will not stand for the kind of injustice that exists in river city. Cincinnati is not the heaven some have believed it's been up to this point," he said from the steps of the Hamilton County Courthouse that summer.

He lost that battle, but won concessions on shotgun placement in squad cars and improved officer training.

"He was a fierce advocate and he fought for good causes," Mayor Charlie Luken said. "I didn't always agree with him, but he believed very deeply in civil rights and justice across the board. I've known him for 20 years, I guess, and when I got with him privately, he was always a very kind and courteous gentleman."

The Rev. Mr. Jones was born in 1935 in Lake Cormorant, Miss. He moved with his family to Detroit in 1955 and became an ordained minister at New Liberty Baptist Church there in 1960.

He attended Detroit Bible College and American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tenn., before becoming pastor at Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in 1965. He was pastor until 1996.

In 1969, the Rev. Mr. Jones formed the Coalition of Blacks for Concerned Justice and Equality and later another organization called Operation Breadbasket.

Through these he lobbied for the federal free lunch program and a free breakfast program in churches and community centers and set up a job bank for unemployed minorities. He established scholarships and job-training programs.

He also founded a nonprofit community group called Black Cultural Productions, which taught mass communication skills to African-Americans and produced a program called Page Two.

Survivors include his wife of 39 years, Annie C. Proctor Jones; a son, the Rev. James W. Jones Jr. of Waldorf, Md.; a brother, Alan "Sonny" Jones of Muskegon, Mich.; two sisters, Carrie Hill-Thornton and Queen Ester Reed, of Detroit; and a granddaughter.

Visitation is 9-11 a.m. Saturday at Greater New Mount Moriah Baptist Church, 7500 Anthony Wayne Ave., followed by the funeral. Interment will be at Oak Hill cemetery.