Clarence B. Jones | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Jones inGeneva in 2013 | |
| Born | Clarence Benjamin Jones (1931-01-08)January 8, 1931 (age 94) Philadelphia,Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Education | |
| Movement | Civil Rights Movement |
| Relatives | Richard Schiff (stepson) |
Clarence Benjamin Jones (born January 8, 1931) is an American lawyer and the former personal counsel, advisor, draft speech writer and close friend ofMartin Luther King Jr. He is a recipient of thePresidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highestcivilian honor.[1][2] Jones is a scholar in residence at the Martin Luther King Jr. Institute atStanford University. He is the author ofWhat Would Martin Say? (HarperCollins, 2008) andBehind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011).[3] His bookLast of the Lions was released on August 1, 2023 (Redhawk Publications). Jones currently[when?] serves as Chairman of the non-profit Spill the Honey Foundation.
In 1962, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter recommending his lawyer and advisor, Clarence B. Jones, to the New York State Bar, stating: "Ever since I have known Mr. Jones, I have always seen him as a man of sound judgment, deep insights, and great dedication. I am also convinced that he is a man of great integrity."[4]
Jones was born January 8, 1931, to parents who were domestic workers inPhiladelphia. He was raised in a foster home and brought up in theCatholic religion; he attended aSisters of the Blessed Sacrament boarding school inNew England, as did his mother.[3] Later he and his family moved toPalmyra, New Jersey; he graduated fromPalmyra High School.[5][6]
He earned a bachelor's degree fromColumbia College in 1953.[7] Following his graduation he was drafted into theUnited States Army in 1953 and spent nearly two years atFort Dix when he declined to sign aloyalty oath.[5]
In 1956, he began attendingBoston University School of Law, obtaining hisBachelor of Laws degree in 1959. He and his wife Anne moved toAltadena, California, where Jones established a practice in entertainment law.
In 1967, at age 36, Jones joined theinvestment banking andbrokerage firm ofCarter, Berlind & Weill where he worked alongside futureCitigroup Chairman and CEO,Sanford I. Weill andSecurities and Exchange Commission Chairman,Arthur Levitt. Jones was the first African-American to be named an allied member of theNew York Stock Exchange.[8]
Jones joined the team of lawyers defending King in the midst of King's 1960tax fraudtrial; the case was resolved in King's favor in May 1960. Jones and his family relocated to New York to be close to the Harlem office of theSouthern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and he joined the firm of Lubell, Lubell, and Jones as a partner. In 1962, Jones became general counsel for the Gandhi Society for Human Rights, SCLC's fundraising arm.
Later 1962, Jones advised King to write President John F. Kennedy on theCuban Missile Crisis. He urged King to make a statement because "your status as a leader requires that you not be silent about an event and issues so decisive to the world" (Jones, 1 November 1962).
Jones accompanied King,Wyatt Tee Walker,Stanley Levison,Jack O'Dell, and others to the SCLC training facility in Dorchester, Georgia, for an early January 1963 strategy meeting to plan theBirmingham Campaign. Following King's 12 April arrest in Birmingham for violating a relatedinjunction against demonstrations, Jones secretly took from jail King's hand-written response to eight Birmingham clergymen who had denounced the protests in the newspaper. It was typed and circulated among the Birmingham clergy and later printed and distributed nationally as "Letter from Birmingham Jail". Jones helped secure bail money for King and the other jailed protesters by flying to New York to meet with New York GovernorNelson Rockefeller, who gave Jones the bail funds directly from his family's vault atChase Manhattan Bank.[9]
Jones continued to function as King's lawyer and advisor through the remainder of his life, assisting him in drafting the first portion of the 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech[4] at Jones' house inRiverdale, Bronx,[10] and preserving King's copyright of the momentous address; acting as part of the successful defense team for the SCLC inNew York Times v. Sullivan; serving as part of King's inner circle of advisers, called the "research committee"; representing King at meetings (for example theBaldwin-Kennedy meeting); and contributing withVincent Harding andAndrew Young to King's "Beyond Vietnam" address at New York's Riverside Church on 4 April 1967.
After King's death, Jones served as one of the negotiators during the1971 prison riot at Attica, and was editor and part owner of theNew York Amsterdam News from 1971 to 1974. In 1982, Jones was convicted of defrauding financial clients and shifted to a full-time business career.[11][12]
In summing up his sentiments on King's life, Jones remarked in a 2007 interview:
"Except for Abraham Lincoln and theEmancipation Proclamation of 1863, Martin Luther King Jr., in 12 years and 4 months from 1956 to 1968, did more to achieve justice in America than any other event or person in the previous 400 years."[4][13]
In 2018 Jones and Jonathan D. Greenberg co-founded theUniversity of San Francisco (USF) Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice to disseminate the teachings of King andMahatma Gandhi.[14]
After Gov.Jerry Brown signed into law (in the fall of 2016) a mandate to develop an ethnic studies program for high schools in California, within a few years some experts were upset about the ESMC ("Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum") that had been proposed. Among those experts was Clarence Jones.[15] Jones (in a letter he wrote to Gov.Gavin Newsom and the state's Instructional Quality Commission) called the ESMC a "perversion of history" for providing material referring to non-violent Black leaders as "passive" and "docile". Jones decried the "glorification" of violence andBlack nationalism as "role models for the students", and rejected the proposed model curriculum as "morally indecent and deeply offensive".[15]
Jones was married to his first wife Ann, the daughter ofWilliam Warder Norton, and they had two sons, Clarence Jr. and Dana, and two daughters, Christine and Alexia.[16] They divorced in 1970.[17]
Jones later married Charlotte Schiff, and became the step-father to actor and directorRichard Schiff and producerPaul Schiff.[18][19]
The Dr. Clarence B. Jones Institute for Social Advocacy was dedicated in his honor in June 2017 atPalmyra High School in New Jersey.[20] In 2024, PresidentJoe Biden awarded Jones with thePresidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S.[2][1]
QUOTE: Clarence Jones, former legal counsel and speechwriter for Martin Luther King Jr., in a letter he wrote to Gov.Gavin Newsom and the state's Instructional Quality Commission, called the ESMC a "perversion of history" for providing material that refers to non-violent Black leaders as "passive" and "docile". Jones, who is co-founder of the University of San Francisco Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice, decried the "glorification" of violence and Black nationalism as "role models for the students", and rejected the curriculum as "morally indecent and deeply offensive". [...]
[and, from anAuthor's note dated 4 days later ("Feb. 1, 2021") this:]
Don't take my word for it. Listen instead to Clarence Jones, Martin Luther King Jr.'s speechwriter, who beseeched Gov. Newsom: "It is morally indecent and deeply offensive to learn that this distorted narrative is being held up by the State of California as a model.... [I]t will inflict great harm on millions of students in our state."
He was steeped in the street politics of the 1960s; one of the first things he says about himself is that after his parents' divorce, his mother married lawyer Clarence B. Jones, whose bio includes working with Martin Luther King and trying to resolve the 1971 riot at Attica.
His family were highly politicised - his mother was a leader of the Women's Liberation movement, and his stepfather, Clarence Jones, was Martin Luther King's lawyer.
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