{"id":9419,"date":"2026-05-27T04:06:30","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T04:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=9419"},"modified":"2026-05-27T04:06:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T04:06:30","slug":"clarence-b-jones-who-helped-mlk-write-i-have-a-dream-speech-dies-at-95","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=9419","title":{"rendered":"Clarence B. Jones, who helped MLK write \u2018I Have A Dream\u2019 speech, dies at 95"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) \u2014 Clarence B. Jones, a former speechwriter and confidante of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who helped pen his famous \u201cI Have A Dream\u201d speech, has died. He was 95.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur father lived a life of conscience,\u201d the Jones\u2019 family said Tuesday. \u201cHe believed, until his final days, that an idea\u201d is \u201cmore 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

As King\u2019s 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\u2019s \u201cLetter from Birmingham Jail\u201d out of his cell and writing many up until the assassination of the civil rights icon in 1968.<\/p>\n

He helped craft King\u2019s 1967 \u201cBeyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence\u201d address given at Riverside Church in New York exactly a year before King\u2019s death. It was considered a hallmark speech for King\u2019s condemnation of the Vietnam War and U.S. militarism in general. He argued that the U.S.\u2019s participation in the war exacerbated poverty across the country.<\/p>\n

Born on Jan. 8, 1931 in Philadelphia, Jones had parents who 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.<\/p>\n

Jones went on to graduate from Columbia University in New York. He then was 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\n<\/div>\n

He was a member of the legal team on the 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan. The nation\u2019s highest court overturned a libel case against the newspaper, which had run an ad condemning police treatment of civil rights demonstrators in Montgomery, Alabama.<\/p>\n

After King\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cFrom Slavery to Obama.\u201d 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\u2019s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute.<\/p>\n

Jones published a book about those years with King in 2023 titled \u201cLast of the Lions: An African American Journey in Memoir.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

The following year he received the nation\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Baddest Speechwriter of All\u201d won an award at the Sundance Film Festival in January and will stream on Netflix later this year.<\/p>\n

Jones is survived by his five children and longtime partner Lin Walters.<\/p>\n

Plans for funeral services and a public celebration of life are still being finalized.<\/p>\n

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Jones died Friday at a senior living community in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Cupertino.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news"],"yoast_head":"\nClarence B. Jones, who helped MLK write \u2018I Have A Dream\u2019 speech, dies at 95 - Silicon Valley Moving Post<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=9419\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Clarence B. 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