When Jones took the field for a 1941 game at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, he didn't realize he was leaving his imprint on collegiate athletic history. Jones became the first African American on an integrated UB football team to set foot on a field south of the Mason-Dixon line, according to UB Archivist Christopher Densmore. What's more, Jones may have been the first black in the country to do so. Researchers at the National Collegiate Athletic Association report they find no record of a black football player competing in the south prior to the UB-Johns Hopkins game.

It was November, 1941: America was not yet involved in World War II, but had just shocked the world with the performance of Black American Jesse Owens in the 1940 Summer Olympics in Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, barriers to black athletes in America were still very high: Jackie Robinson would not break the color barrier in baseball for another six years and no other professional sport was yet integrated.

Jones attended UB between 1940 and 1948, with his studies interrupted for several years by his service in the Army during World War II. He had been a standout high school player at Buffalo's Technical High, and a solid student as well. In fact, UB actually landed him on their football squad because of racial discrimination elsewhere. Accepted at West Point and nominated to the Naval Academy at Annapolis by an Illinois congressman who personally begged Jones' father to let him play for the middies, Jones was turned away by Navy officials because of his race. He then accepted a Niagara Frontier scholarship to play at UB.

Recalling the game, and what football at UB has meant to him and his family over the years, still dampens Jones' eyes. As proud as he is of his own football career, Jones considers his son, Leeland A. Jones, to be his greatest contribution to UB football. The younger Jones, now a psychiatrist and UB Medical School faculty member, once led the nation in touchdowns scored as a running back with the Bulls.

Jones explained that the coaches had ar ranged the game with Johns Hopkins University and heard no objections, realizing full well that Jones was a black rarity in white collegiate athletics. However, he recalls, "When we arrived in Baltimore, I wasn't allowed in either of the two white hotels where the rest of the team was staying. It was not until members of the team had their 50th reunion a few years ago that any of the others even realized I was not allowed in the hotels," said Jones. "Since we were split up, everyone just figured I was in the other hotel."

The retired assistant vice president at Erie Community College, former University of Buffalo Trustee and Buffalo City Councilman tells how he was transported, alone, to a "black" hotel in another part of town. But Jones never spent the night there.

He contacted southern black journalists who had written stories about his acceptance into, and later rejection by, the Naval Academy. "They told me, 'You aren't going to stay there; it just wouldn't be right' and they sent someone for me." Jones was taken to be a guest in the home of Dr. Carl Murphy, a prominent black citizen who lived near the campus of Morgan State University, now a UB football rival.

It was a beautiful place and he had these lovely daughters," recalled Jones fondly. Several years later, Jones married one of those daughters.

Jones was active in student government while at UB, serving as student body president his junior year, and was named to Who's Who Among American College Students as a senior. Racism, though present, wasn't often a problem at UB, he said. However, Jones did recall once, during the first practice of a new season, when bigotry tried to rear its head.

A new star recruit had arrived named Ray 'Dixie' Whalen, on scholarship after playing the previous season at a southern university, Jones explained. Whalen walked into the locker room and, seeing Jones, turned and said, "Who is that? I can't play with him," using a racial epithet. But the rest of the team simply laughed, and Whalen's prejudice was crushed by his embarrassment. Jones and Whalen, who went on to become the president of a southern university, became and have remained lifelong friends.