Ambassador Jim Jones' $1 million gift bringing Carl Albert Center archives to the public

A young Rep. James R. Jones meets with U.S. Speaker of the House and fellow OU alumnus Carl Albert. Photo courtesy OU Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center

As one of Oklahoma’s most prominent and experienced political figures, Ambassador James R. Jones spent his career at the center of American history for decades. His generosity will make that history accessible to the public for many more decades to come.

Jones recently made a $1 million gift to the University of Oklahoma Foundation to establish the James R. Jones Digital Political Archives at OU’s Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center. His contribution will provide an archival web platform to host his digitized papers while also funding an endowed graduate fellowship.

“This gift allows the Carl Albert Center to remain a leader among the nation’s congressional archives,” said Michael Crespin, director and curator of the center and an OU professor of political science. “There are only a handful of archives with similar systems, and it is rare to digitize an entire collection of this size.”

Shortly after his 1961 OU graduation, Jones became a legislative assistant to Oklahoma Congressman Ed Edmondson. He earned a law degree from Georgetown University and joined the White House staff of President Lyndon B. Johnson; by age 28, Jones was Johnson’s chief of staff.

“I was very fortunate to have been at the location of important events during the past 60 years,” said Jones, who was elected to Congress in 1972 and served until 1987.

Jones was a ranking member of Congress’s powerful Ways and Means Committee and the Trade Subcommittee, chair of the House Budget Committee, and Deputy Majority Whip. He became influential in international trade, Social Security and health care legislation, and helped create and pass the landmark Budget Act.

In 1989, Jones was elected chairman of the American Stock Exchange and was appointed ambassador to Mexico by President Bill Clinton in 1993. Today, he is chairman of Monarch Global Strategies, which helps U.S.-based companies open markets in Mexico and Latin America.

“I think my time as chief of staff for President Johnson was probably the most pressure-packed and interesting,” Jones reflected. “And the ambassadorship came at a very important time when both Mexico and the U.S. were changing our policies to look to the future.”

Jones’ collection at the Carl Albert Center encompasses more than 407 boxes of documents, photographs and audio-video mixed media, Crespin said. He anticipates it will take several years for the graduate fellow and student interns to scan and digitize the collection.

Crespin added that the Jones fund also will allow OU to digitize parts of the center’s other collections, including papers of 62 former members of Congress and 25 political leaders, congressional staffers and journalists, as well as the Julian P. Kanter Political Commercial Archive containing 120,000 political ads. “We’d probably have a mile and a half of documents if we lined them all up together,” he said.

“When I became director, I was asked, ‘What do you want to do with the archives?’ Crespin said. “My answer was, ‘We have to find a way to bring the collections to more people,’ and the way to do that is through digitization. This gift is transformational for the Carl Albert Center.”

Jones said he hopes access to the center’s collections will give students, scholars and the public a better understanding of government’s true function.

“The things I was particularly proud of are those that don’t make the headlines,” he said. “What I missed most is when that farmer in Bixby, Okla., calls with a problem he can’t solve and you’re able to get it resolved for him—seeing his response and a real, new vigor for supporting our democratic form of government.”