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Clarence B. Jones, a civil rights icon and longtime Palo Alto resident who helped write Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and who helped spread King’s teachings as a scholar at Stanford University, died earlier this month. He was 95.
An attorney and author who wrote the books “What Would Martin Say?” and “Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation,” Jones was born in Pennsylvania on Jan. 8, 1931, and attended Columbia University before joining the U.S. Army in 1953, according to his biography on the Stanford University King Institute website.
After returning to school and obtaining his law degree at Boston University, Jones became Martin Luther King Jr.’s attorney, speechwriter and close advisor. He lived in New York, worked closely with the Southern Christian Leadership Council and helped organize the Birmingham Campaign, which began in April 1963 as a way to protest the city’s segregationist policies, according to his bio. After King was arrested, Jones secretly took his handwritten note from the jail cell and distributed it, turning “Letter from Birmingham Jail” into one of the most iconic documents of the civil rights era.
He also tried to negotiate the end of the 1971 inmate revolt at Attica Prison, which was ultimately crushed by the National Guard.
He died in an assisted-living facility in Cupertino, according to the New York Times, which reported on his death on May 25.
Jones was well known locally for his work as an educator both at Stanford and at the University of San Francisco, where he served as diversity visiting professor. In 2017, the Palo Alto City Council approved a resolution in his honor, calling him one of the city’s “most esteemed residents.”
“Clarence B. Jones continues to challenge us here in Silicon Valley to address issues of equity in employment, education and housing,” the proclamation states.
In accepting the award, Jones said that aside from former President Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. “may have done more to achieve social, racial, political justice and equality than any other person or event in the previous 400-year history of the United States of America.”
“I’ll never forget that I am the providential, gratuitous beneficiary of having a relationship with perhaps the most extraordinary person in the 20th century,” Jones said at the meeting before accepting the proclamation to a standing ovation.
In his 80s and 90s, Jones continued to champion civil rights and educate residents about the contributions of King and other civil rights leaders. In 2013, he participated in “Let Freedom Ring,” a Palo Alto event that was organized by Youth Community Service and that commemorated the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.
That same year, he told this publication in an interview that he wants to see Palo Alto and other affluent cities in Silicon Valley do more to combat increasing inequality. He pointed to East Palo Alto’s school dropout rate as an example of failed regional leadership.
“If Silicon Valley and Palo Alto really wanted to make a difference in stopping the high drop-out rate, if they really wanted to make a difference in affecting the programs that would stop violence, guess what? They could do it. There’s a trillion-dollar platform of wealth in Silicon Valley,” he said.
At the same time, Jones said he was hopeful that Silicon Valley could help fulfill King’s dream, particularly when it comes to addressing the issue of unequal education.
“They might in some ways be able to do it better than the government — if they have the commitment and social conscience to do so,” Jones said in a 2013 interview.
His commitment to social justice and equality never wavered. In July 2025, Jones was one of hundreds of people who participated in the “Good Trouble Lives On” rally in Palo Alto, which honored the life of another civil rights icon, late U.S. Rep. John Lewis.
In a January 2024 conversation with Lerone A. Martin, director of Stanford’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, Jones called his friend Martin Luther King Jr. “the baddest dude on the Earth,” according to Stanford Report, a university publication. Jones also said at that time that he looks forward to 2027, when full documents pertaining to the life and death of King were slated to be released by the FBI. He reportedly noted that date when he was fitted with a pacemaker at Stanford Health Care.
“I said, ‘It looks like I’m gonna live until 2027,’” Jones told his doctors, according to Stanford Report.
