[4] His mother was an English teacher, and his father a Presbyterian missionary who went to rural areas to speak to people about Christianity.
[4] He was often exposed to racial discrimination in his youth, and witnessed his parent attempt to save a young boy from being killed by the Ku Klux Klan after smiling at a white woman in the town.
— J. Charles Jones[5] He lived in Chester for ten years until his family moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1947.
They made the move so his father could attend Johnson C. Smith University, having been told by the church that he must acquire a degree.
[6][7] On February 1, 1960, after attending the National Youth Summit Conference in the Soviet Union, Jones learned of a sit-in protest at the Greensboro Woolworth staged by four black activists to peacefully confront racial segregation.
[6] Some teenagers then subsequently staged picket lines at local drug stores in the city that refused to serve blacks.
[9] Jones co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC),[11] with Ella Baker and many others at Shaw University in 1960.
"[10] After staging a sit-in in Rock Hill, South Carolina, nine black activists were arrested for "refusing to stop singing hymns during their morning devotions.
"[12] In response, the SNCC sent Jones, Charles Sherrod, Diane Nash, and Ruby Doris Smith to get arrested in order to carry out the committee's "jail, no bail" newly designed strategy, which was intended to prevent the movement from being financially disenfranchised by being jailed and having to pay money for bail.
[12][13] On July 19, 1962, Jones obtained a permit and organized an integration protest at the all-white Tift Park in Albany, Georgia.
[15] The police chief refused to let them into the building, and King asked Abernathy to lead the activists in a prayer.
[15] A few hours after these arrests Jones led a group of seventeen more activists (including Freedom Singer Rutha Harris) to the police headquarters.
[17] He and other activists rode buses into the segregated southern United States, to challenge the non-enforcement in the southern United States of the Supreme Court rulings Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960),[18] which decided that segregated public buses were unconstitutional.
[20] He recalled attending the I Have a Dream speech by King,[10] and was struck with awe at the number of people who showed up.
— J. Charles Jones[20][21] After witnessing King begin to deliver his speech, he said that he knew change was going to happen.
[24][25] Charlotte City Councilman Justin Harlow described Jones after his death as "a true stalwart in advocacy".