AP News

Clarence B. Jones, the renowned civil rights attorney, speechwriter, and close adviser to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who helped draft the historic “I Have A Dream” speech, has died at the age of 95.

Jones passed away Friday at a senior living community in Cupertino, California, surrounded by family, according to a statement released Tuesday.

“Our father lived a life of conscience,” the family said. “He believed, until his final days, that an idea is more powerful than the march of any army.”

Jones played a pivotal role in some of the most defining moments of the American Civil Rights Movement. As King’s personal attorney and trusted confidante, he helped shape many of the speeches and strategies that transformed the fight for racial equality in the United States.

He is widely recognized for assisting in the writing of King’s iconic “I Have A Dream” speech delivered during the 1963 March on Washington, one of the most influential speeches in modern history.

Jones also helped secretly smuggle pages of King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” out of prison during King’s incarceration in Alabama, ensuring the powerful message reached the public.

In addition, he collaborated with King on the landmark 1967 anti-war speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” where the civil rights leader strongly condemned the Vietnam War and criticized US militarism.

Born on January 8, 1931, in Philadelphia, Jones grew up in a working-class family whose parents were domestic workers for a wealthy Quaker family in New Jersey. His talent for writing and public speaking emerged early, especially after delivering a graduation speech in 1949 focused on breaking racial barriers.

Jones later graduated from Columbia University and earned a law degree from Boston University after serving in the US Army.

His relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. began in 1960 when King recruited him to join his legal team during a tax evasion case in Alabama. Jones left a successful entertainment law career in California and relocated to New York to work full-time alongside King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Jones also served on the legal team involved in the historic 1964 US Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan, which strengthened protections for press freedom in America.

Following King’s assassination in 1968, Jones transitioned into finance and became the first Black American designated as an allied member of the New York Stock Exchange.

In later years, he devoted himself to education and activism. He joined the University of San Francisco faculty in 2012, teaching courses on civil rights history and social justice. In 2018, he co-founded the Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice and later became a scholar-in-residence at Stanford University’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute.

Jones published his memoir, “Last of the Lions: An African American Journey in Memoir,” in 2023, reflecting on his life alongside King and the Civil Rights Movement.

In 2024, then-President Joe Biden awarded Jones the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.

That same year, Jones appeared alongside Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry at a San Francisco Giants baseball game, where they jointly threw out the ceremonial first pitch. Curry also co-produced a documentary about Jones titled “The Baddest Speechwriter of All,” which earned recognition at the Sundance Film Festival and is expected to stream on Netflix later this year.

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

Funeral arrangements and plans for a public celebration of life are expected to be announced in the coming days.