Clarence B. Jones, who helped MLK write 'I Have A Dream' speech, dies at 95

Dr. Clarence B. Jones, left, a former speech writer for Martin Luther King Jr., stands next to Golden State Warriors basketball player Stephen Curry, front right, during the playing of Lift Every Voice and Sing before a baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and the New York Yankees in San Francisco, May 31, 2024.

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Clarence B. Jones, a former speechwriter and confidante of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who helped pen his famous “I Have A Dream” speech, has died. He was 95.

Jones died Friday at a senior living community in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Cupertino, according to a statement released by the family, who was at his side.

“Our father lived a life of conscience,” the Jones’ family said Tuesday. “He believed, until his final days, that an idea” is ”more powerful than the march of any army. We are grateful beyond words for the love, the prayers, and the friendships that sustained him, and us, across this long and remarkable life.”

As King’s personal attorney, Jones was heavily involved in some of the key moments of the Civil Rights Movement. He is credited with smuggling pages of King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” out of his cell and writing many up until the assassination of the civil rights icon in 1968.

He helped craft King’s 1967 “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” address given at Riverside Church in New York exactly a year before King’s death. It was considered a hallmark speech for King’s condemnation of the Vietnam War and U.S. militarism in general. He argued that the U.S.’s participation in the war exacerbated poverty across the country.

Born on Jan. 8, 1931 in Philadelphia, Jones had parents who were domestic workers for a wealthy Quaker family several miles away in New Jersey, according to the Clarence B. Jones Institute for Social Advocacy. Jones was class valedictorian of an integrated high school in Palmyra, New Jersey. His knack for speechwriting became apparent in 1949, when he gave a graduation speech about breaking down racial barriers.

Jones went on to graduate from Columbia University in New York. He then was drafted by the U.S. Army but was honorably discharged almost two years later. He went on to earn a law degree from Boston University.

In 1960, in what would be the start of a seminal friendship, Jones was approached by King to be on his legal team in a tax evasion case brought by the state of Alabama. Jones pivoted from a career in entertainment law in California and moved his family to New York City. There he could be closer to King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and serve as a full-time adviser, attorney and speechwriter for him.

He was a member of the legal team on the 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan. The nation’s highest court overturned a libel case against the newspaper, which had run an ad condemning police treatment of civil rights demonstrators in Montgomery, Alabama.

After King’s death, Jones went on to work for a Wall Street investment banking firm and became the first Black American with the designation of allied member of the New York Stock Exchange.

He later ventured into academia. In 2012, he joined the faculty at the University of San Francisco where he taught law students as well as undergraduates in courses such as “From Slavery to Obama.” In 2018, he co-founded the Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice at the school. Around the same time, he also became a scholar-in-residence at Stanford University’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute.

Jones published a book about those years with King in 2023 titled “Last of the Lions: An African American Journey in Memoir.”

The following year he received the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from then-President Joe Biden. A few weeks later, a tearful Jones appeared at a San Francisco Giants baseball game with Golden State Warriors basketball star Stephen Curry to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. Curry has produced and co-directed a short documentary on Jones.

“The Baddest Speechwriter of All” won an award at the Sundance Film Festival in January and will stream on Netflix later this year.

Jones is survived by his five children and longtime partner Lin Walters.

Plans for funeral services and a public celebration of life are still being finalized.