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Clarence B. Jones
Advisor & Speechwriter for Martin Luther King Jr.
Clarence B. Jones
Advisor & Speechwriter for Martin Luther King Jr.
Biography
Dr. Jones is currently an Adjunct Professor, University of San Francisco and a Scholar Writer in Residence at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research & Education Institute, Stanford University, and Palo Alto, CA, and the Director of its Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice.
In a distinguished and heralded career, Clarence B. Jones served as political advisor, counsel and draft speechwriter for the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., joined Sanford I. Weill and Arthur Levitt, Jr. in Carter, Berlind & Weill, Inc. as an Allied Member of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), becoming the “first African American “ partner in a Wall Street investment banking firm, has been twice recognized as Fortune Magazine’s “Business Man of the Month,” and founded successful financial, corporate and media-related ventures. He has also provided strategic legal and financial consulting services to several governments around the world including The Bahamas, The Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Zambia.
Dr. Jones has received numerous state and national awards recognizing his significant contributions to American society. Through his work in the civil rights movement, he has dramatically impacted the course of American history. He coordinated the legal defense of Dr. King and the other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference against the libel suits filed against them and The New York Times by the police commissioner and other city officials of Birmingham, AL. The Supreme Court ruling in this case – Sullivan vs. The New York Times – resulted in the landmark decision on the current law of libel. In April 1963, he drafted the settlement agreement between the City of Birmingham and Martin Luther King, Jr. to bring about the end of demonstrations and the desegregation of department stores and public accommodations. He assisted Dr. King in the drafting of his celebrated “I Have A Dream” speech that he delivered at the March On Washington, August 28th 1963. In September 1971, he again found himself at the center of history-in-the-making when, at the request of Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller; he was requested to help negotiate an end to the historic Attica prison inmate rebellion.
Dr. Jones has been the subject of numerous television and radio interview programs, appearing in such notable media vehicles as CNN, The O’Reilly Factor, The Tavis Smiley Show, NY1’s One-on-One with Budd Mishkin, NPR radio, BBC UK (radio and TV), CBS local and National, The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Canadian Broadcasting, Alitjd Wat Dutch TV, the Charlie Rose Show, AL Jazeera, Sirius XM”s the Bob Edwards Show, and featured in articles in the Washington Post, USA Today, Vanity Fair, UK Sunday Mirror, Time, Ebony and Jet Magazines, Le Temp, Geneva, Switzerland and several publications in Canada, the UK, France, Ukraine and Ireland. He was part of The March, a documentary on the March on Washington, jointly produced by Sundance /BBC/Smoking Dogs/PBS. He took part in a show for a program on The Letter from the Birmingham Jail for Al Jazeera America.
A much-requested speaker, he has addressed corporate audiences at Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and the U.S. headquarters of British Petroleum, GE, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, The Limited, and Google Headquarters and laws firms such as Sullivan &Cromwell, Andrews &Kurth, Texas, Fenwick &West, LLP, Mountain View, CA
He has been a featured speaker at Rutgers University School of Law, The Sciences Po, Paris, and The American Institute at Oxford University, The British Library, the Bristol Book Fair, and the Aye Write Book Fair in Glasgow. He has spoken at Veterans Administrations Hospitals, The California African-American Association of School Superintendents, the New York Public Library, the NYC 92nd Street “Y”, the New Albany Community Foundation, Columbus, OH, Aspen Ideas Festival and Stanford University, University of CA at Davis, the University of San Francisco Law Schools
Dr. Jones has been recognized for his illustrious career with honors awarded by a wide variety of distinguished organizations, including: Selected by Time Magazine in 1972 as one of 100 Future Leaders of America, Letter of Commendation from President William J. Clinton, for work in Birmingham, Alabama on behalf of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement, and the Clarence B. Jones Institute For Social Advocacy was created in June of 2017.
Dr. Jones has served on the prestigious boards of The Impact Repertory Theater & Dance Co. and The Theatre Development Fund NYC, the Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, NY. He is on the boards of Evolve, The Andrew Goodman Foundation and Indika Alliance. He serves on the Advisory Board of The Communications Network, Inc. He is the Chairman of the Spill The Honey Foundation, a Black- Jewish Alliance.
He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia College, Columbia University as well as a Juris Doctor degree from Boston University’s School of Law and a Certificate from The New York Institute of Finance and the NASD for his Allied Membership in the NYSE. Additionally, he has an Honorary Doctorate in Communications from Allegheny College in Allegheny, PA, Honorary Doctorates of Humane Letters, Drew University, Madison, NJ, Lincoln University, PA and the University of San Francisco.
Dr. Jones has twice taught his course “From Slavery to Obama”, at Stanford University’s School of Continuing Studies Master of Liberal Arts Program. He continues to lecture at Stanford. Since the fall of 2012 he teaches a reconfigured 15-week version of the same course, to undergraduates in the College of Arts & Sciences, University of San Francisco. In conjunction with USF he has developed USF’s on line course, “From Slavery to Obama-Renewing The Promise of Reconstruction” In Spring 2013 he taught a new course he created for USF’s graduate school of Urban Affairs and Public Policy, “The Art of Advocacy Speech Writing”. He is on sabbatical from teaching so he can complete the writing of his Memoirs, referenced below.
He is co-author of “WHAT WOUD MARTIN SAY?” 2008, “BEHIND THE DREAM-The Making of the Speech That Transformed A Nation”, 2011 and the audio version of the book which was released on August 20th, 2013 by the University of San Francisco. He also co-authored an E-book, UPRISING: Understanding Attica, Revolution and the Incarceration State. Dr. Jones posts a regular column in the Huffington Post. He is also writing his “MEMOIRS”: “A Pencil and A Dollar Bill- Reflections During An Eight Decade African-American Journey to The Election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, and Beyond”.
He currently resides in Palo Alto, CA where he continues to write and lecture.
Speaker Videos
Honoring Martin Luther King's Dream in the 21st Century
50th Anniversary of MLK's I Have A Dream Speech
Dreaming On, Marching On
Speech Topics
The 21st Century Challenge of the Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was the 20th century's pre-eminent apostle of non-violence and the pursuit of justice. From Dr. King's beautifully illustrated philosophies in his 1963 Letter From A Birmingham Jail to the powerful "I Have A Dream" speech, Jones’ finds that 50 years later, the same challenges of racial segregation and unfair treatment are still posed for civil society today.
The Color of Skin vs. The Context of Character in the 21st Century
Jones’ gives a frank discussion on the translation of this phrase extracted from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. More specifically, the conditions of present-day America are scrutinized in comparison to the challenge of Dr. King and whether society is consistent or inconsistent with the message.
Redefining the Landscape of Corporate America
The expression “Nero while Rome burned” refers to heedless and irrelevant behavior in the midst of a crisis. Jones’ believes much of Corporate America is the “Neroes” of today. In his speech, he revisits and redefines the landscape of Corporate Responsibility and its response to many of the social, economic, and educational problems in society.
Education in America Today: Why Are We So Far Behind?
This speech objectively lays out a summation of the facts pertaining to education today. With communication based technology being the main source of gathering information in our society, the absence of education hurts young people, causing an influx of uneducated students. Therefore, these insufficient youth, as deemed by society, are unable to make a meaningful economic contribution to sustain themselves and their families. Jones’ goal is to shed light on some of the possible options for action and other solutions in order to address and redress the education problem in America today.
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