Barbara O. Jones, ‘Daughters of the Dust’ Actress, Dies at 82

Barbara O. Jones, the admired actress who emerged from the L.A. Rebellion movement of Black filmmakers at UCLA in the 1970s to star in Haile Gerima’s Bush Mama and Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, has died. She was 82.

Jones died Tuesday at her home in Dayton, Ohio, her brother Raymond Minor told The Hollywood Reporter.

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“Rest In Peace & Power,” Dash wrote on Instagram.

For Gerima, Jones portrayed an imprisoned woman fighting for social justice in the 36-minute short film Child of Resistance (1973) — the character was inspired by activist Angela Davis — and a welfare recipient in Watts who undergoes an ideological transformation in the filmmaker’s feature debut, Bush Mama (1979). Both films were made at UCLA.

Jones starred as a Ugandan nun questioning her faith in Dash’s 13-minute student film Diary of an African Nun (1977), adapted from an Alice Walker short story. She then reunited with Dash to play Yellow Mary, a granddaughter who returns one final time in 1902 to her Gullah family’s island home off the coast of Georgia in Dash’s acclaimed feature debut, Daughters of the Dust (1991).

A critical darling, Daughters of the Dust played at Sundance and was the first American feature by an African American woman to receive a general theatrical release. It is on Sight & Sound‘s latest list of the greatest films of all time.

Also billed as Barbarao, Barbara-O and BarbaraO during her career, Jones appeared alongside Muhammad Ali in the 1979 NBC miniseries Freedom Road. He played a former slave and Union soldier elected to the U.S. Senate, and she was his wife.

And she starred as a grandmother and mother of Nicole Ari Parker’s character in Patrice Mallard’s Mute Love (1999).

“Barbara O was a brilliant actor who illuminated the screen for many Black independent filmmakers,” Dash told THR in an email. “She was wildly talented and a force to be reckoned with both on and off the screen.”

Born Barbara Olivia Minor in Dayton Ohio, Jones went to Roosevelt High School — her mother, Alberta, was a business teacher there — and was a radio personality who went by the name Bobbie Montgomery on local station WDAO in the late 1960s. She also attended Antioch College before making her way to California.

Her résumé also included the Bernie Casey-starring Black Chariot (1971), the science fiction/horror movie Demon Seed (1977) and Maangamizi: The Ancient One (2001) and TV appearances on The Quest, The Powers of Matthew Star, Laverne & Shirley, Wonder Woman and Lou Grant.

In addition to Raymond and another brother, Marlon, survivors include her children, Gina, William and D’hati.

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