While studying at the University of Michigan, Jones met a politically active student, Robert Higgins, who would eventually become her husband.[12] At a gay rights parade in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the early 1980s, Higgins claimed to be God and that AIDS was a form of punishment. After being punched by a woman at the parade, he returned with a shotgun and was arrested with a charge that carried four years in jail. Instead of appearing in court to face charges, Jones and Higgins fled the United States to Europe, and Jones resigned from the University of Michigan with a note addressed to President Ronald Reagan that read: "I reject your lying racist [expletive], and I call upon God. Do what you want. God is with Bob and I'm with him."[22] Some have debated the authorship of the note. In 1988, Jones and Higgins returned to the United States, but kept their identities hidden.[1]
In the late 1990s, Jones's mother was diagnosed with throat cancer, and in 1997, Higgins objected to a medical procedure for his mother-in-law, but was banned from the hospital room after a psychological evaluation on Jones's mother found she was "inappropriately manipulated by family--especially son-in-law."[1] Jones and Higgins wrote up a document about the incident called "Kidnapped/Held Incommunicado," which was sent to the national press, and on March 3, 1997, was forwarded to President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. On March 20, Jones's mother died, igniting Higgins to start a campaign against the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center, which had been the defendant in several civil rights cases in the recent past.[22] During this time, Jones's novel The Healing was in the process of being released. Higgins began to call and write the Lexington police multiple times a day.[22] A letter that arrived to the police station on February 20, 1998, indicated a bomb threat, and police figured out that Higgins, who at the time was using the alias Bob Jones, was previously wanted for arrest. After a standoff with police at their residence, Higgins committed suicide and Jones was put on suicide watch. Since then, Jones only talks to family and Harper and has refused several requests for interviews.[1] Prior to this, Jones gave several interviews, including one with her mother in the pages of Obsidian and another in Claudia Tate's canonical anthology Black Women Writers.
