The son of Joseph "Papa" Newman and the former Florence Knox, Newman graduated at the age of twenty in 1941 from the then segregated black McKinley Senior High School in the capital city ofBaton Rouge. He attended the then all-black Southern University, at which he was a member of the Reserve Corps program. He was quickly called to active duty in the United States Army, in which he served until his discharge in 1945 at the rank of Sergeant 4th Class. For fifteen years thereafter, he owned and operated an Esso service station in Baton Rouge.
Political arena
Even before he entered politics, he was involved in bringing Little League competition to Scotlandville. In 1972, Newman won the first of his three four-year term on the East Baton Rouge Parish Council as the representative from the Scotlandville area. In 1983, he was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives to succeed Joseph Delpit, who had also been the first African American city council member from Baton Rouge. Newman served a single term in the House from 1984 to 1988 which corresponded with the third term of GovernorEdwin Edwards. He defeated the 31-year-old lawyer Kip Holden, later the first black to serve as Baton Rouge Mayor-President. Through his "Help Our People for East Baton Rouge" program, Representative Newman in 1985 raised $14,000 through bingo games to keep open three food stamp offices in north Baton Rouge, which had been marked for closure under state budget restraints. In the 1987 nonpartisan blanket primary, Holden unseated Newman. The two subsequently became warm friends.
On October 4, 2014, Newman died at the age of ninety-three. He was survived by his wife of more than a half-century, the former Sallie Gillespie Newman ; children, Brenda Joyce Cooks, Linda Cooks Narcisse and husband Johnny S. Narcisse, Edwin Cooks and wife Jocelyn H.Cooks, Urlecia Cooks, and eight grandchildren. He was preceded in death by two other daughters, Constance Newman Douglas and Karen Newman Norris. A memorial mass was held on October 11, 2014, at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. Newman donated his body to the Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans. Joseph Delpit called Newman "the hardest-working elected official I knew, including me... There wasn't a person who needed help that Jewel would not get out of his bed at midnight to see about helping him." Mayor Holden said that Newman, who later became his mentor, "paid special attention to the needs of people in the district he represented, which is also the district I grew up in. If someone called to say they had a problem with their ditch, he would go out to the home himself to see what the problem was." The Jewel J. Newman Community Center on Central Road off Interstate 110 North is named in his honor.
