Clarence B. Jones, Who Helped Write Speeches for MLK, Dies

The attorney contributed to the civil rights leader’s famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech and many others

Associated Press

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Published May 27, 2026

portrait of clarence b. jones seated at a desk

Clarence B. Jones, a confidante of Martin Luther King Jr., has died. He was 95.

Demetrius Philp/Getty Images

Clarence B. Jones, a former speechwriter and confidante of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who helped pen his famous “I Have A Dream” speech, has died. He was 95.

Jones died Friday at a senior living community in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Cupertino, according to a statement released by the family, who was at his side.

“Our father lived a life of conscience,” the Jones family said Tuesday. “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.”

As King’s personal attorney, Jones was heavily involved in some of the key moments of the Civil Rights Movement. He is credited with smuggling pages of King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” out of his cell and writing many speeches for the civil rights icon up until King’s assassination in 1968.

He helped craft King’s 1967 “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” address given at Riverside Church in New York exactly a year before King’s death. It was considered a hallmark speech for King’s condemnation of the Vietnam War and U.S. militarism in general. He argued that America's participation in the war exacerbated poverty across the country.

“I had the ability to internalize Dr. King’s voice in my mind, so I could write the text in perfect pitch with his voice. It would be right on the money,” Jones told AARP in 2024.

Born on Jan. 8, 1931 in Philadelphia, Jones' parents were domestic workers for a wealthy Quaker family several miles away in New Jersey, according to the Clarence B. Jones Institute for Social Advocacy. Jones was class valedictorian of an integrated high school in Palmyra, New Jersey. His knack for speechwriting became apparent in 1949, when he gave a graduation speech about breaking down racial barriers.

Jones went on to graduate from Columbia University in New York. He was then drafted by the U.S. Army but was honorably discharged almost two years later. He went on to earn a law degree from Boston University.

In 1960, in what would be the start of a seminal friendship, Jones was approached by King to be on his legal team in a tax evasion case brought by the state of Alabama. Jones pivoted from a career in entertainment law in California and moved his family to New York City. There he could be closer to King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and serve as a full-time adviser, attorney and speechwriter for him.

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In 2023, Jones told AARP about being on the scene for King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech in a story marking the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington.

“I was behind Dr. King onstage as he stepped up to the microphone with prepared notes in his hand,” he said. “But after he’d delivered the first seven-and-a-half paragraphs, Mahalia Jackson, who was on the platform with us, shouted, ‘Tell ’em about the dream, Martin. Tell ’em about the dream!’ I thought, ‘Oh, Lord, those people don’t know it, but they’re about to go to church.’ Everything from Martin after that was extemporaneous. He’d used the phrase ‘I have a dream’ in sermons and speeches at several previous public gatherings. But until the March on Washington, it never got such a response.”

In 1964, Jones was a member of the legal team on the landmark Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan. The nation’s highest court overturned a libel case against the newspaper, which had run an ad condemning police treatment of civil rights demonstrators in Montgomery, Alabama.

After King’s death, Jones went on to work for a Wall Street investment banking firm and became the first Black American with the designation of allied member of the New York Stock Exchange.

He later ventured into academia. In 2012, he joined the faculty at the University of San Francisco where he taught law students as well as undergraduates in courses such as “From Slavery to Obama.” In 2018, he co-founded the Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice at the school. Around the same time, he also became a scholar-in-residence at Stanford University’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute.

Jones published a book about those years with King in 2023 titled Last of the Lions: An African American Journey in Memoir.

The following year he received the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from then-President Joe Biden. A few weeks later, a tearful Jones appeared at a San Francisco Giants baseball game with Golden State Warriors basketball star Stephen Curry to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. Curry has produced and co-directed a short documentary on Jones, The Baddest Speechwriter of All. It went on to win an award at the Sundance Film Festival in January and will stream on Netflix later this year.

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

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