Clarence B. Jones, civil rights activist who helped write MLK’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, dies at 95

Clarence B. Jones, a top civil rights activist and lawyer who helped write part of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech, has died. He was 95.

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Jones was one of the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington where King delivered the epic speech and helped push for the passage of the Voting Rights Act two years later which lifted legal barriers preventing African-Americans from voting.

Till his death Friday at an assisted living facility in Cupertino, California, Jones remained a keeper of King’s legacy and a vocal critic of attempts to undermine the gains African-Americans have made since the Civil Rights battles in the 1960s.

Just last month, Jones criticized President Donald Trump’s push to redraw Congressional maps as an effort to weaken Black voting power.

“The problem is, Trump is living in a world that doesn’t exist anymore,” Jones said during an appearance at the 69 th San Francisco International Film Festival.

“Sure you’re going to have some blips,” Jones said. “But more powerful than the march of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come. More powerful than the march of many armies or that d--- head called President Trump.”

Jones was at the festival because he was the subject of a documentary called “The Baddest Speechwriter in the World,” which was directed by Golden State Warriors basketball star Stephen Curry and Oscar-winning filmmaker Ben Proudfoot.

“He was a brilliant strategist, lawyer, author, and philanthropist,” the Rev. Al Sharpton, a fellow civil rights activist and an MS NOW host, said online . “So many of us owe a great debt to Clarence Jones.”

Born Jan. 8, 1931 in Philadelphia , Jones was the son of a chauffeur and a maid and spent part of his childhood at a Roman Catholic boarding school before returning to his parents. He was drafted into the Army after graduating from Columbia College in 1953 and quickly ran into trouble with the military brass after he refused to sign a loyalty oath.

In 1959, Jones earned a law degree from Boston University and headed out west to California where he set up shop as an entertainment lawyer and rubbed elbows with the likes of Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Frank Sinatra.

But in 1960, Jones was recruited to be part of the legal team that successfully defended King against tax evasion charges brought by the state of Alabama that critics said was an attempt to decapitate the civil rights movement by jailing its leader.

From then on, Jones became one of King’s top confidantes and a top fundraiser for King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

When King was arrested by Alabama authorities for leading demonstrations in the city of Birmingham, it was Jones who smuggled out the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in which King wrote that people had a responsibility to follow just laws and a duty to break unjust ones.

Jones was also on the winning side of the landmark 1964 freedom of the press case, New York Times v. Sullivan, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a public figure must prove a news outlet acted with “actual malice” to win a defamation or libel case.

After King’s assassination in 1968, Jones continued on with his legal career, became the first Black partner in a Wall Street brokerage on the New York Stock Exchange, and later became the principal owner and publisher of The New York Amsterdam News.

Jones also taught at both Stanford University and at the University of San Francisco, where was co-founder of USF’s Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice.

“Through his teaching, he inspired generations of students to engage deeply with Dr. King’s legacy and the enduring power of peaceful protest,” USF President Salvador Aceves said in a statement Monday. “A man who stood at the center of history, Clarence generously shared his wisdom, courage, and moral vision with our university community.”

In 2024, Jones was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden.

Married and divorced three times, Jones is survived by his five children and his longtime partner, Lin Walters, according to The New York Times.