His role in 1968 movie Night of the Living Dead marked the first time an African-American actor was cast as the star of a horror film and one of the first times in American cinema where a person of color was given an important role when the script did not explicitly call for one. At the time, casting a black man as the hero of a film where all the other characters were white was potentially controversial. While some saw the casting as significant, the director of the film states "Jones simply gave the best audition."
