A close friend of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, who helped the civil rights icon write his “I Have A Dream” speech, has died.
Clarence B. Jones was 95 years old.
Jones died on May 22 at a senior living community in Cupertino, California, according to his family.
“Our father lived a life of conscience,” they said on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press. “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.”
Not only was Jones a confidante of King, but he also was the reverend’s personal attorney and was central to the Civil Rights Movement.
He smuggled the pages of King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” out of his cell, according to the AP.
He also helped write King’s “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” speech given in 1967, a year before King’s murder.
Jones was born in Philadelphia in 1931 to parents who were domestic workers for a New Jersey Quaker family.
He attended an integrated high school in Palmyra, where he was class valedictorian. His graduation speech in 1949 spoke about breaking down racial barriers.
Jones graduated from Columbia University before being drafted into the Army. He refused to sign a loyalty oath and after nearly two years, he was initially given an “undesirable” discharge, but sued and won an honorable discharge, The New York Times reported.
Jones eventually earned his law degree from Boston University.
He was asked by King in 1960 to join the legal team defending the reverend on tax-evasion allegations in Alabama, changing the trajectory of Jones’ law practice from entertainment law in California to New York City, where he worked with King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
The New York Times reported he helped plan protest campaigns and raised money for the organization while also fighting in the courts against laws that discriminated against citizens and defended those arrested.
After King’s murder, Jones worked for a Wall Street investment banking firm and was the first Black American to be an allied member of the New York Stock Exchange.
He became an educator, teaching at the University of San Francisco starting in 2012 and, in 2018, co-founded the Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice. Jones also served as a scholar in residence at Stanford University’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute.
In 2023, he published a book about working with King called “Last of the Lions: An African American Journey in Memoir.”
He received a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2024 from then-President Joe Biden.
A documentary, produced and co-directed by Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry, " The Baddest Speechwriter of All," won an award at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. It will air on Netflix later in 2026.
Jones leaves behind his partner, Lin Walters, and his five children, the AP reported.
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