‘Stood at the center of history’: Clarence B. Jones, civil rights lawyer and key adviser to Martin Luther King Jr., dies at 95
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Jones, who helped shape King’s monumental ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then-President Joe Biden in 2024.
Clarence B. Jones, a renowned lawyer and civil rights activist who served as one of Dr. Martin Luther King’s closest advisors and helped shape the March on Washington and King’s landmark “I Have A Dream” speech in 1963, has died, according to his son. He was 95.
Although Jones’ son confirmed his death to the New York Times on Monday, the University of San Francisco, where he stood as the co-founder of the school’s Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice, announced that he died on May 22.
“A man who stood at the center of history, Clarence generously shared his wisdom, courage, and moral vision with our university community,” school President Salvador D. Aceves said in a statement.
For eight years, from 1960 until King’s death in 1968, Jones served as King’s chief legal counsel and adviser, including helping draft the opening lines of his famed “I Have A Dream” speech at the March on Washington. According to Vanity Fair, Jones was the man who kept King’s secrets; King used his name to check into hotels to avoid fanfare, amongst other items that kept the civil rights icon safe. Still, by his mere closeness to King and the movement, he faced various indignities at the hands of the FBI, including having his phones bugged.
In 2006, Jones recalled sneaking legal paper into Birmingham jail to assist King in writing what would become the “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
“I would take sheets from a yellow legal pad and stuff them into my shirt,” Jones said at the time. “Martin would then write like mad. Very hard to decipher. I’d sneak the pages out. He had confidence that I would get them to Willie Pearl Mackey, [the secretary of King cohort] Wyatt Walker. Until he got the paper, he was writing on the margins of a Birmingham News and New York Times.”
Born in North Philadelphia in 1931, Jones attended Columbia University, where he majored in political science first became involved in the movement through his legal counsel to King and others, serving as counsel for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and its fundraising wing. He also gave counsel in the landmark Sullivan v. New York Times Co. lawsuit, which reshaped libel laws in the United States.
“So many of us owe a great debt to Clarence Jones,” Rev. Al Sharpton wrote in a tribute on X. “He was a brilliant strategist, lawyer, author, and philanthropist.”
After King’s assassination in 1968, he turned to academia, teaching students at USF and at Stanford. For his efforts in civil rights and humanitarian work, President Joe Biden awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2024.
Earlier this year, NBA star Steph Curry produced a film about Jones titled “The Baddest Speech Writer of All.” The 29-minute short film will premiere on Netflix later this year.