Education

Dr. Clarence B. Jones biography

February 17, 2022

Dr. Clarence B. Jones

Just recently I had a video conference with Dr. Clarence B. Jones. It was amazing to see Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s counsel and advisor live in front of me. It was an incredible historic experience to have met with him.

Check out my posting on Unheard Voices Magazine for more about the meeting with Dr. Jones. Below was a biography that was sent from Dr. Jones to me. Enjoy.

Dr. Clarence B. Jones biography

Dr. Clarence B. Jones, Founding Director Emeritus of the Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco, served as legal counsel, strategic advisor and draft speechwriter to Martin Luther King, Jr. from 1960 until Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis Tennessee on April 4, 1968. Throughout these years, Martin Luther King, Jr. depended on Dr. Jones for legal and strategic counsel, and assistance with the drafting of landmark speeches and public testimony, and Dr. Jones was privy to Reverend King’s decision-making processes and political struggles. Among other leading roles in his historic relationship with Dr. King:

Dr. Jones served as counsel to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the landmark libel case New York Times v. Sullivan (1964); he helped Dr. King to write and publish the seminar books Why We Can’t Wait (1964) and Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (1967), and he advised Dr. King on the drafting of his path-breaking “Beyond Vietnam” at Riverside Church in New York City (1967).

He was engaged in close working relationships and friendships with many leaders of the Black liberation movement who interacted with King throughout these years.

He served as liaison between Dr. King and Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Robert F. Kennedy, among other figures. because of his relationship with Dr. King and his associates, Dr. Jones he was the target of illegal wiretaps, initiated by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, from July 1963 until Dr. King’s assassination.

Carrying on Dr. King’s legacy

Across the decades following Dr. King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, Dr. Clarence B. Jones worked to carry on Dr. King’s legacy, to continue the nonviolent struggle for social justice, voting rights and democratic inclusion. Throughout these years, Dr. Jones has engaged American society in an extraordinary variety of fields, capacities and roles, including the following:

Dr. Jones’s path-breaking career in law, business, finance and communications includes professional activities as legal counsel; his appointment as the first African American allied member of the New York Stock Exchange; his roles as a principal member of the Wall Street investment banking firm Carter, Berlind & Weill and as President & CEO of CBJ Multimedia Associates, Inc.; his tenure as editor and publisher of the New York Amsterdam News; his service on The Communications Network Inc. Advisory Board, and his recognition by The Communications Network by the awarding of an annual “Clarence B. Jones Impact Award.”

Dr. Jones has been a leader in the field of conflict resolution and crisis management. In 1971, following the outbreak of a violent uprising among inmates at the Attica Prison in New York, at the request of then New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Dr. Jones served a critical role as a negotiator and intermediary between the aggrieved inmates, prison authorities, and state officials under extraordinarily tense and tragic circumstances.

As a lawyer, civil rights leader, and business executive in the entertainment field, Dr. Jones maintained close personal friendships — and collaborative working relationships as — with important 20th century artists, writers, athletes, and social justice activists including Muhammed Ali, James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, and Lorraine Hansberry. In 1974, Dr. Jones negotiated the historic “Rumble in the Jungle” boxing match between Ali and George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire. Dr. Jones has served on the boards of cultural organizations including The Impact Repertory Theater & Dance Company, The Theatre Development Fund NYC, and the Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.

Dedicated to furthering the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. among a wide public audience, and from generation to generation, Dr. Clarence B. Jones has been passionately engaged as a writer, public speaker, and teacher. He has authored two acclaimed books: What Would Martin Say? (Harper Perennial, 2008) and Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation (St. Martins, 2012), and countless articles and essays for the Huffington Post and many other publications. For many years, Dr. Jones has been Scholar in Residence at Stanford University’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, and Diversity Professor at the University of San Francisco (USF), where he has taught courses on public interest advocacy and speechwriting. A popular course he developed and taught at USF (“From Slavery to Obama: Renewing the Promise of Reconstruction”) is now taught in an online version in many historically black colleges. In 2019 he co-founded the USF Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice, with Jonathan D. Greenberg, and he served as the Institute’s Founding Director through December 2020.

Dr. Jones has been a keynote speaker at schools, colleges and universities; corporations and banks; nonprofit foundations, hospitals and health organizations; and churches and synagogues across the country. He serves on the boards of Evolve, The Andrew Goodman Foundation and Indika Alliance.