St. Louis civil rights leader dies

ST. LOUIS -- The Rev. Buck Jones, who spent more than 30 years championing civil rights and fighting for affordable housing, died Friday of a blood clot. He was 62.

After founding Project HOPE, or Helping Other People Emerge, in East St. Louis in 1970, Jones spent the next three decades directing the group's efforts to help people in both Missouri and Illinois.

"He was one of the kindest men I'd ever met in my life," said Helen Barks, a volunteer and former board chairwoman with Project HOPE. "He cared deeply and worked completely for the disenfranchised in our society."

Born in Hernando, Fla., Jones earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Michigan State University, a master's degree in theology from Yale University Divinity School and a doctorate in divinity from Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Groves.

In 1966, Jones and his wife, Ethel, moved to St. Louis, where he would earn a national reputation for his ministry of social justice for the urban poor and elderly.

He is credited with founding Habitat for Humanity in East St. Louis and working with tenants of Cochran Gardens, a public housing complex north of downtown St. Louis. He helped lead a rent strike in 1969 that led to a law limiting the amount of rent housing authorities can charge.

"He did so much, so many different things to help people," said Norman Seay, a longtime civil rights leader in St. Louis. "I think of him as a person with a religious background who was able to intertwine that religious experience with his everyday actions."