Clarence B. Jones
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Clarence Benjamin Jones (born January 8, 1931) is an American lawyer and the former personal counsel, advisor, draft speech writer and close friend of
Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
He is a Scholar in Residence at the Martin Luther King Jr. Institute at Stanford University. He is the author of ''What Would Martin Say?'' (HarperCollins, 2008) and ''Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation'' (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011). His next book, ''Last of the Lions'' is scheduled for release in Spring of 2023 (Red Hawk Publishing). In 1962, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter recommending his lawyer and advisor, Clarence B. Jones, to the New York State Bar, stating: "Ever since I have known Mr. Jones, I have always seen him as a man of sound judgment, deep insights, and great dedication. I am also convinced that he is a man of great integrity".


Early life

Jones was born January 8, 1931, to parents who were domestic workers in
Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
, Pennsylvania. He was raised in a foster home and, brought up in the
Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
religion, attended a
Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament (SBS) are a Catholic order of religious sisters in the United States. They were founded in 1891 by Katharine Drexel as the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People. During her life, Saint ...
boarding school in New England, as did his mother. He later moved with his family to
Palmyra, New Jersey Palmyra is a borough in Burlington County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 7,438, an increase of 40 (+0.5%) from the 2010 census count of 7,398, which in turn reflected an incr ...
, and graduated from Palmyra High School.Johnson, Thomas. A
"Man in the News"
''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', April 29, 1971. Accessed December 9, 2017. "When Mr. Jones was a boy the family moved to Palmyra, N. J., and he went to Palmyra High School."
He earned a bachelor's degree from Columbia College in 1953. Following his graduation he was drafted into the
United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...
in 1953 and spent nearly two years at Fort Dix when he declined to sign a
loyalty oath A loyalty oath is a pledge of allegiance to an organization, institution, or state of which an individual is a member. In the United States, such an oath has often indicated that the affiant has not been a member of a particular organization or ...
.


Legal and financial career

In 1956, he began attending Boston University School of Law, obtaining his
Bachelor of Laws Bachelor of Laws ( la, Legum Baccalaureus; LL.B.) is an undergraduate law degree in the United Kingdom and most common law jurisdictions. Bachelor of Laws is also the name of the law degree awarded by universities in the People's Republic of Ch ...
degree in 1959. He and his wife Anne moved to
Altadena, California Altadena () ("Alta", Spanish language, Spanish for "Upper", and "dena" from Pasadena, California, Pasadena) is an unincorporated area and census-designated place in the Verdugo Mountains region of Los Angeles County, California, approximately 14 ...
, where Jones established a practice in entertainment law. In 1967, at age 36, Jones joined the investment banking and
brokerage A broker is a person or firm who arranges transactions between a buyer and a seller for a commission when the deal is executed. A broker who also acts as a seller or as a buyer becomes a principal party to the deal. Neither role should be con ...
firm of Carter, Berlind & Weill where he worked alongside future Citigroup Chairman and CEO, Sanford I. Weill and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman,
Arthur Levitt Arthur Levitt Jr. (born February 3, 1931) is the former Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He served from 1993 to 2001 as the twenty-fifth and longest-serving chairman of the commission. Widely hailed as a c ...
. Jones was the first African-American to be named an allied member of the
New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...
.


Martin Luther King Jr.

Jones joined the team of lawyers defending King in the midst of King's 1960
tax fraud Tax evasion is an illegal attempt to defeat the imposition of taxes by individuals, corporations, trusts, and others. Tax evasion often entails the deliberate misrepresentation of the taxpayer's affairs to the tax authorities to reduce the taxp ...
trial In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribunal ...
; the case was resolved in King's favor in May 1960. Jones and his family relocated to New York to be close to the Harlem office of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civ ...
(SCLC), and he joined the firm of Lubell, Lubell, and Jones as a partner. In 1962, Jones became general counsel for the Gandhi Society for Human Rights, SCLC's fundraising arm. Later 1962, Jones advised King to write President John F. Kennedy on the Cuban Missile Crisis. He urged King to make a statement because "your status as a leader requires that you not be silent about an event and issues so decisive to the world" (Jones, 1 November 1962). Jones accompanied King,
Wyatt Tee Walker Wyatt Tee Walker (August 16, 1928 – January 23, 2018) was an African-American pastor, national civil rights leader, theologian, and cultural historian. He was a chief of staff for Martin Luther King Jr., and in 1958 became an early board memb ...
, Stanley Levison, Jack O'Dell, and others to the SCLC training facility in Dorchester, Georgia, for an early January 1963 strategy meeting to plan the
Birmingham Campaign The Birmingham campaign, also known as the Birmingham movement or Birmingham confrontation, was an American movement organized in early 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to bring attention to the integration efforts o ...
. Following King's 12 April arrest in Birmingham for violating a related injunction against demonstrations, Jones secretly took from jail King's hand-written response to eight Birmingham clergymen who had denounced the protests in the newspaper. It was typed and circulated among the Birmingham clergy and later printed and distributed nationally as " Letter from Birmingham Jail". Jones helped secure bail money for King and the other jailed protesters by flying to New York to meet with New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who gave Jones the bail funds directly from his family's vault at
Chase Manhattan Bank JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., doing business as Chase Bank or often as Chase, is an American national bank headquartered in New York City, that constitutes the consumer and commercial banking subsidiary of the U.S. multinational banking and fi ...
. Jones continued to function as King's lawyer and advisor through the remainder of his life, assisting him in drafting the first portion of the 1963 " I Have a Dream" speech at Jones' house in
Riverdale, Bronx Riverdale is a residential neighborhood in the northwestern portion of the New York City borough of the Bronx. Riverdale, which had a population of 47,850 as of the 2000 United States Census, contains the city's northernmost point, at the Coll ...
, and preserving King's copyright of the momentous address; acting as part of the successful defense team for the SCLC in '' New York Times v. Sullivan''; serving as part of King's inner circle of advisers, called the "research committee"; representing King at meetings (for example the Baldwin-Kennedy meeting); and contributing with
Vincent Harding Vincent Gordon Harding (July 25, 1931 – May 19, 2014) was an African-American pastor, historian, and scholar of various topics with a focus on American religion and society. A social activist, he was perhaps best known for his work with and wr ...
and
Andrew Young Andrew Jackson Young Jr. (born March 12, 1932) is an American politician, diplomat, and activist. Beginning his career as a pastor, Young was an early leader in the civil rights movement, serving as executive director of the Southern Christian L ...
to King's " Beyond Vietnam" address at New York's Riverside Church on 4 April 1967.


After Martin Luther King

After King's death, Jones served as one of the negotiators during the 1971 prison riot at Attica, and was editor and part owner of the ''
New York Amsterdam News The ''Amsterdam News'' (also known as ''New York Amsterdam News'') is a weekly Black-owned newspaper serving New York City. It is one of the oldest newspapers geared toward African Americans in the United States and has published columns by s ...
'' from 1971 to 1974. In summing up his sentiments on King's life, Jones remarked in a 2007 interview: "Except for Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, Martin Luther King Jr., in 12 years and 4 months from 1956 to 1968, did more to achieve justice in America than any other event or person in the previous 400 years" (Jones, 18 May 2007). Following the divorce of the actor and director
Richard Schiff Richard Schiff (born May 27, 1955) is an American actor and director. He is best known for playing Toby Ziegler on ''The West Wing'', a role for which he received an Emmy Award. Schiff made his directorial debut with ''The West Wing'', directing ...
's parents, Jones married Schiff's mother, Charlotte. In 2018 Jones and Jonathan D. Greenberg co-founded the
University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco (USF) is a private Jesuit university in San Francisco, California. The university's main campus is located on a setting between the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park. The main campus is nicknamed "The Hil ...
(USF) Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice to disseminate the teachings of King and
Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti- ...
. After Gov.
Jerry Brown Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (born April 7, 1938) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected Secretary of ...
signed into law (in the fall of 2016) a mandate to develop an ethnic studies program for high schools in California, within a few years some experts were upset about the ESMC ("Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum") that had been proposed. Among those experts was Clarence Jones. Jones (in a letter he wrote to Gov.
Gavin Newsom Gavin Christopher Newsom (born October 10, 1967) is an American politician and businessman who has been the 40th governor of California since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 49th lieutenant governor of California f ...
and the state's Instructional Quality Commission) called the ESMC a “perversion of history” for providing material referring to non-violent Black leaders as “passive” and “docile.” Jones decried the “glorification” of violence and
Black nationalism Black nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that black people are a race, and which seeks to develop and maintain a black racial and national identity. Black nationalist activism revolves aro ...
as “role models for the students”, and rejected the proposed model curriculum as “morally indecent and deeply offensive.”


Legacy

The Dr. Clarence B. Jones Institute for Social Advocacy was dedicated in his honor in June 2017 at Palmyra High School, Palmyra, N.J.''Invitation to Dedication of the Dr. Clarence B. Jones Institute for Social Advocacy''
, Palmyra High School. Accessed December 9, 2017. "Clarence Benjamin Jones was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 8, 1931 and attended Palmyra High School in New Jersey from 1945 to 1949."


References


External links


Profile of Clarence B Jones at the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford UniversityClarence B. Jones' page at The Huffington Post
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, Clarence Benjamin Living people Lawyers from Philadelphia Boston University School of Law alumni Columbia College (New York) alumni People from Palmyra, New Jersey People from Riverdale, Bronx United States Army soldiers New York Amsterdam News people African-American Catholics Year of birth missing (living people)