Clarence B. Jones

Dr. Clarence Benjamin Jones (January 8, 1931 – May 22, 2026) the lawyer who served as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s personal counsel and speechwriter from 1960 until King’s assassination in 1968, died on May 22, 2026, in Cupertino, California. He was 95. Jones helped craft the opening of the “I Have a Dream” speech, smuggled pages of the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” out of King’s cell, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2024.

Born January 8, 1931, in Philadelphia, Jones graduated as valedictorian of Palmyra High School, earned his bachelor’s degree from Columbia College in 1953, and his LL.B. from Boston University School of Law in 1959.

For nearly a decade, Jones worked closely with King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, providing legal counsel, drafting correspondence and speeches, raising funds, and defending the movement against libel suits. He helped draft the settlement that ended the 1963 Birmingham demonstrations and assisted King with the speech delivered at the March on Washington. Jones later filed the copyright application that kept “I Have a Dream” in the King family’s hands.

In 1967, Jones joined the Wall Street firm Carter, Berlind & Weill, becoming the first African American to hold allied-member status at the New York Stock Exchange. After King’s death, he served as an official observer during the Attica prison uprising, co-purchased The New York Amsterdam News and Harlem’s WLIB radio, and helped launch It’s Showtime at the Apollo.

Later in life, Jones was a scholar at Stanford University’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute and a Diversity Visiting Professor at the University of San Francisco, where he co-founded the Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice in 2018. He also served as the inaugural Chairman of Spill The Honey, advocating for renewed Black-Jewish cooperation.

President Barack Obama welcomed Jones and his family to the White House for Black History Month in 2015. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2024. In 2026, his life was the subject of The Baddest Speechwriter of All, a documentary co-directed by Stephen Curry and Ben Proudfoot that won the Short Film Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.