Clarence Jones Interview: On Being Martin Luther King Jr's Advisor & Speechwriter

what started in the beginning if you tell us about you you know how you first met dr. King and how he last roped you into all this I met dr. King when I was 29 years old the first week in February but in 1960 and he was 31 the occasion for the meeting was a telephone call I had received from a Hubert Lanie what was the judge Hubert Delaney in New York who had known me and had been helpful to me and making a recommendation for me to get into law school early admission so I wouldn't have a wedding of the year I was trying to get wait to be good at Columbia Law School but they said no physicians are fills and you have to wait another year and I don't want to do that since I've already been in the United States Army and between the end of the Korean War for two years and I was you know I want to go and get all my after I got out of the Army in 1955 and any event so each calls him he says Clarence he says I am the chief counsel of this Negro preacher you know this preacher in Alabama and Martin Luther King jr. Reverend Martin Luther King jr. I said yes I heard he said well he's been indicted by the state of Alabama for tax evasion tax evasion and perjury lying on his state income tax return and that I've have I spotted my defense team to very able distinguish Negro tax lawyers from Chicago Robert Ming and Robert Leighton one of them I don't remember which one was actually the lawyer for the Illinois Department of Internal Revenue Service encyclopedic on federal estate taxes and then I have a young man in Montgomery by the name of Fred gray all very able lawyers but what I really need Clarence I would like for you to help me I'd like for you to be my law clerk I'd like for you there help in the preparation of the defense of the case and when he first spoke with me I thought he was talking about doing research that Specter in 1960 and I didn't really think about it but I figured well you know I could go into research in a librarian and I was just send it to him special delivery didn't ever they didn't have any Internet I don't even recall whether we had fax machines but anyway I knew what I would and he said no no no no no that's not gonna work now you need to go down there and when he described in detail what he was in fact requesting me to do and I I said yes I am so sorry but I simply cannot do that and he was very disappointed in me and it was very difficult for me to say no to him that wasn't a Thursday evening the next morning very early I get a call from just Lee again only this time he says I did not know it at the time of our conversation last night Clarence Thursday night but you know dr. King is in the air now he's on his way the Los Angeles he has a speaking engagement and then he's going to be speaking as a guest preacher in the Baptist Church over in a colored neighborhood somewhere in Los Angeles but I told him so take advantage of the change in time that he's going to land about 11:45 your time and I told him the very first thing you should do because rent-a-car come out and see you I was just I mean and a suburb outside of Los Angeles Anthony to California so I'm thinking to myself oh no but I already told the judge you know I couldn't go down to Montgomery Alabama so I didn't know how I could credibly say I wouldn't agree to meet now as I say when I tell this story and I told her on more than one occasion in 1960 dr. King was very popular aside from having been agenda identified with the success in earlier four or five years earlier in the Montgomery bus boycott he had also been on the that cover picture story of time look and Life magazine so when I told my wife at the time who is now deceased that Martin Luther King jr. was coming tomorrow you would have thought that in 2017 terms that an amalgamation of Michael Jackson George Clooney Maggie mahaki Ben I can't think the fences you know the great black actor Denzel benzo watching you thank you and and oh come contemporary stars you think that that that was was coming to our home there's evening walks into our home the bell rings little bell there he is standing there comes into the house is accompanied by Reverend Bernard Lee traveled with him my wife had prepared some little snacks for coffee sit around the coffee table after some initial pleasantries he leans forward on the coffee table but his hands on across the table leans forward closer to me and he says you know lawyer Jones trainee Jones he says you know we have lots of white lawyers from the Midwest from the Northeast to help us with our cause but what we need mr. Jones our young Negro lawyers like you to help me and our people as was Doug never beat him in the south so I said dr. King as I said to Jeff Zeleny I I wish I could help you but I simply cannot help you with me it's going to have to in Montgomery Alabama and then he began to tell me in a little more detail of what he was seeking to do what he was doing and I listened then he asked me some questions about myself you know I told about I'm the only child of living domestic household servants I lived with my parents on and off before I was six years of Asian and they I lived with him in this service quarters of the household of the people for whom they worked as my mother I made her cook my father so furnitures a chauffeur and a gardener I told him all that and that at the age of six thereabouts my mother principally decided to put me in a Catholic boarding school run buddy founded by her sister Katherine Katherine Drexel member of the Jackson family a philadelphia very wealthy family and apparently she took a part of her trust as she shared with her brother also named her so founded the Drexel Institute and other things and she funded this a school that had a plaque on the outside of his doors called a school for indigent meaning poor and knowing at the time indigent colored boys and Indians meaning Indians young boys sewer from the reservations in New Mexico in Arizona because they apparently admission school so that's that's that's ours that's what I they placed me there from the age of six until fourteen and I stayed there most of the time except during the summers when I would spend time with my parents wherever they were I told him that I also told him that I that one of the most painful experiences my life was the death of my mother when I was in my third year in college my mother saw me graduated as valedictorian from a public high school in Palmyra New Jersey never saw me graduate from college never saw me graduate from law school had one daughter baby daughter that I never saw her toward never saw a ranch and it was you know it was very painful for me you know and I also told him that when my mother died I was taking an examination on January 8th 1952 the date of my birthday at Columbia College and the proctor tactus me on the taps me on the phone is that you Clarence Jones to say yes but as emergency call for you and I I was so quick he said why don't you finish your essay a bishop so I finished my hotbar examination I believe he and I go into the office of the Dean at Columbia College and I said yes you have to call the hospital's an urgent message I finally reached my father that they had operated on my mother that day earlier that day in January for colon cancer and the cancer they used the words the doctors words had spread so much and so severely that they had to remove bring her bowel track outside of her body and put it outside colonoscopy I don't understand any of that at the time just they would dramatic in the description what they had to do and very clinically they said she probably has three to four months to live maximum if that that's that's what my birthday present January 1952 I got myself together I quickly went down anyway so I told I told her dr. King that and some other things he leaves at which point my wife turns to me in a somewhat not somewhat in a critical almost sarcastic voice to says what do you think you are doing that's so important that you can't come but you can't go and help this man it came all this distance - for your assistance and so as I said on other occasions I got into what could best be described as my lawyers young lawyers Bank I simply said and her name that is simply factually untrue he had speaking engagements this weekend in Los Angeles and judge Delaney thought the sense he was gonna be out here that he should take advantage of being on an income to see me but he did not come out here specifically to ask my my help and then I added in a kind of anger at her and angry at the situation as it besides aside just because some Negro preacher got his hand caught in the cookie jar stealing I need my problem and if it wasn't a guilty he wouldn't have been indicted she says I don't believe you he's your lawyer I couldn't be talking away I said that's the way I feel so as I my first book was what would Martin say and as I described assistance in the first chapter that was the cold knife in the Jones household that she was pissed at me so there's a Friday night then next morning very early in the morning also California time I answer the phone a voice on the other end of the phone is just should being sweet with saccharine honey mr. Jones yes my name is Dora MacDonald yes you know mr. Jones yes you know dr. King he enjoyed so much his visit with you and mrs. Jones but you know mr. Jones he forgot he forgot to invite you to be his guest tomorrow he's preaching in the Baptist Church in this church Baldwin Hills and he wanted to be sure that I wish you so that you could you know wife come and says yes now my wife is so that's seven months president Franklin at the time and she says well you may not be going to Montgomery Alabama but you're going to that church still on the kind of belligerent mood sorry you know I go to visit I mean I go to see dr. King in this Baptist Church to Pastor then was Reverend each me Charles I'd only been in Los Angeles for seven and a half months but I quickly came to understand that Baldwin Hills at that time if you were a Negro of any degree of financial success a doctor a lawyer a businessperson and you had money you probably didn't vote on hills it was the equivalent of like white Beverly Hills a Bel Air so I go to this Baptist Church ministers and name is riven HB Charles but 1300 people I was sitting about one third I'm the discipline he's introduced by the resident minister dr. King gets up and he says ladies and gentlemen brothers and sisters the text of my sermon today is the role and responsibility of the Negro professional to aid our less fortunate brothers and sisters who are struggling for our freedom in the south so I thought to myself immediately that this is one smart dude that he was smart enough to come and choose this place where all these black bush Miley black bourgeoisie professionals were just could not have chosen a better audience to give his message I repeat I've never seen or heard Martin Luther King jr. speak before but I should also add I'd never heard any other human being with the attributes and characteristics of a human being with two arms a leg walking around so I never hurt anybody his speech in his voice was mesmerizing it was bow binding and he covered some of the things that he said to me across the centrum across the table in my living room with my wife and I about what he was doing in the South but in the sermon it was filled with much more detail much more texture and much more power and then during the course of this powerful mesmerizing speech he says for example there's a young man sitting in this church today my friends in New York for whom I have great respect my friends in New York tell me this young man has brains have been touched by Jesus so I'm thinking I mean I don't think there's any rational relationship to me I'm curious they tell me that this young man a young lawyer that when he goes and does research on any problem they tell me it his research he goes all the way back to the time of 1066 and we have no Conqueror and Magna Carta so at that time I begin to pay a little attention to him because I'm thinking about as well-spoken SS Baptists peaches how does they know anything about it history English come along my lawyer I know something about that so I began to really pay attention I said this and then know something you know and then he says they further tell me that when he dies when he does his legal research and he writes down what he finds on a page the words are so compelling they just jump off the page now at that point I then become very interested because knowing that it bears no rational description to me I then begin to think opportunistically I've only been in Los Angeles for seven I have months whoever this young man is he's described what in his church service is over I'm gonna find out who he is because if he's that good he can be helpful to me you know he's got to be some song you know so and then he seemed listening when he said you know but I had a chance to meet this young man the other night in his home and I Athena call a boy and I said to myself Oh Lord and I tried to try to just make myself as small as I could in a few Church no no what I had told dr. King in the discussion about myself and my parents being live-in domestic household services that it wasn't any state secret I didn't think I didn't expect him to go repeated to 1300 strangers that was reminiscent of that's hit song years ago by Roberta Flack killing me softly with your socks he was killing me softly but telling me this is songs about my life and then he did something that was very unfair he said you know his parents were live-in domestic household servants his mama was a maiden of cook and his father was a chauffeur a gardener but he is forgotten from whence he came and then there is an actual poem by Langston Hughes the Negro poet and author caption letter from mother to son it's an actual poem now in the poem that Langston Hughes wrote it describes a negro woman who is domésticos in the scrubbing stairs as she pauses periodically and she says I'm doing this for you son life ain't been no crystal stair so what dr. King did he changed the lyrics and made my mother the actor in the poem and changed the lyrics like my mother was talking but when he did that I started to cry it was so problem cheers I'm sitting there because I immediately saw like a video picture of my mother in there in a domestic uniform 17 in front of my parents I'm not really disturbed church service is over I said he was very popular so he was standing outside of the church on the steps to the pulpit signing autographs and as I came into view walking over to him and he saw me he says you know I never mentioned your name mr. Jones I never mentioned your name sometimes we Baptist preachers I never mentioned your name I didn't say anything I just kept walking I walked over to him until I got to him and I took my left arm and grabbed his right arm or took my right hand and put it in his right hand and pulled him to me still a little teary eye and I said dr. King when do you want me to go to Montgomery Alabama now that's what I call in writing about it I'm making him a disciple what happened with that tax evasion case the verdict came out in April 1960 he might have company Alabama before an all-white jury an acquittal not think about it here is a controversial civil rights leader that gets acquitted acquittal by acquitted by an all-white and my elbow so when the jury was polled and you found out that the reasons behind the equivalence of all the jurors lived in a community and the two tax lawyers principally from Chicago they just destroyed they wiped the floor with the government's case and it was clear in the published accounts in the trial that if somebody had voted for conviction look like a fool there would have been people once a I'm not gonna Grayson's I don't believe with anything Martin Luther King did but I'm not dumb I'm not a dummy you know and so he was acquitted by an all-white jury and I remember him saying we did it and I said no we didn't do anything I said judge you Bellini and Fred gray and of two tax lawyers that's what did it and I said I I want to try to get over he says no you're my lucky rabbit's but you can't go so we all insisted on going on and have something to eat thereafter before I could go back in New York it was it was extraordinary that local citizens put their own pride of not being made a fool of over their racism in that case anyway now I know you're probably gonna ask me maybe some other questions about Martin Luther King jr. and other questions about period of time as I said I'm I mean I'm 86 I didn't say about I'm 86 going on 87 years old and January and you know there's an African proverb that says if surviving lions don't tell their stories the hunters will get all the credit so I'm more than anxious to tell some of those stories Martin Luther King jr. to the extent that we will talk about him further and other people I I hate to burden you with the consequence of my also being a professor I teach and when I teach students particular courses I created for example called from slavery to Obama renewing the promise of reconstruction and we get to that point in the course which is a 15 week course for undergraduate students at the University San Francisco was originally taught at Stanford University in the graduate school for students getting a master's be at double arts but when we get to that point in this political survey of the slavery institution of slavery the income and adduction of white supremacy take it all up to the to Obama and pass okay and we talk about the period in that journey where in Martin Luther King jr. in the 20th century comes on the scene and I say to my students I want them to have a very accurate remembrance of the position of Martin Luther King jr. in the landscape and pantheon in American history and this is the time I say to that this is the only time during this course they come to my course with laptops and iPads and no progress this is the only time I want you to write down every single word I'm about ready to say to you because I don't want there to be any confusion and I say first of all you should understand in the 20th century that Martin Luther King jr. was the preeminent apostle of non-violence love and a commitment to the pursuit of personal excellence but in order for you to bracket his position in the pantheon and the journey of American history this is what you must remember in 12 years and four months from 1956 until April 4th 1968 the date of his assassination with the exception of the presidency of Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 Martin Luther King jr. may have done more to achieve political social economic justice and access to economic opportunity in voting rights than any other person or event in the previous four hundred year history of the United States translated into seventeen vernacular he was a bad dude that's the person for whom I had no interest but I ended up being privileged to work for understanding as a political adviser personal lawyer and job speechwriter for seven and a half years and we can talk about other things but one thing I was wanted to set the record straight when I said he was the preeminent pasal non-violence he was but I was not committed to non-violence when I met dr. King and I made that very clear him and that used to upset him because he tried to convince me that Nasser no no no that's what you believe and I was flecked you and try to be some best lawyer but I said white man puts his hand on me he's going down Martin he said well why do you say that one is that the under staged infantry you know States military played football you know I mean physical was not my style you know I'm not for initiating any kind of violence again II won but somebody puts a hand on me forget it it's what I can't can't you know what say Dorothy cotton used to say you know we can't have Clarence involved in any demonstrations you know because he doesn't have the discipline to be nonviolent I say yeah Martin I said well that's why that's why I jokingly said well that's why I don't ever want you to be part of a demonstration he sounds gonna look at my lawyers in jail like that so that's justice but you know that was that was there was a lot that happened during the period of time you know I I hear as we as we are now getting 2018 coming on the 50th anniversary of the this assassination and in 2018 of assassination Memphis all slots and me also the people coming out of the woodwork or asking questions about it many of them asking questions which have what I call their own revisionist theory of history they talk about Robert Kennedy they talk about Jack Kennedy they talk about Malcolm X they talk about President Obama and and I paraphrase something that is very relevant to today's discussion spoken by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan everybody's entitled to their own facts but they're not entitled to their own opinion now I know there are other people I mean there are people for whom I have great respect like John Lewis star thick cotton CD Diddy uh-uh-uh-uh-uh Diane Nash Bubba Jesse Jackson maybe others I'm meaning of course the Zerona Clayton and people in the lab who were who were alive at the time at Martin King was mine they had a different relationship with him relationship the John Lewis and Dorothy cotton Jesse Andy and the Carlton's are different in the kind of relationship I had I they were part of the in one way or another the SCLC organization I was not part of the SCLC organization SCLC didn't pay me um it was a period of time when my work with him overlap when I was also an investment banker on Wall Street I think it's fair to say that as a lawyer from Mecca seeing all other things I know as a matter of fact that in one year I made more money than all the combined salaries of everybody on the on the staff at Southern Christian that was Adin pick me and amply everything I did didn't even pick up my occasionally they pick up a hotel but most of my travel was picked up on my then American Express card in the reverse micelle so and and and and that in a strange way I think it affected how dr. King looked at me and another person I was very very close to him Stanley David Levinson neither of us were in any way financially dependent you ever took or wanted a penny from him other Southern Christian Leadership Conference in fact as the history will record and it's uncomfortable for some people but the fact of the matter is there were persons like Harry Belafonte Stanley David Everson and it's sometimes a white lawyer by the name of Harry Webb Joe and myself collectively we were the collective business financial reservoir that kept dr. King and his family afloat and chief among them was Harry Belafonte and so I I get really personally offended when I hear or read one of the more adult King children say one they didn't know about it or two they expressed this anger and Harry about one thing another and I said well hold on he's demanded paid for their schooling but I'm gonna go to school he's the man that paid for the domestic servants and when there was a critical time when he didn't have any money it was Stanley Levison Harry walked talents Harry Belafonte had Clarence Jones has sent the King family money so don't go I don't want to hear a damn ill word about any one of those persons who spoke particularly Harry it was 90 years old and let me tell us a little better thoughts were talking about Stanley Levinson can you set up who he was and his lady David Levithan I believe Stanley met dr. King in 1956 I think was introduced to him by Bayard Rustin Stanley knew dr. King before I did Stanley was an existing person he had an identical twin they had different names if they were identical things you see him in the room you she's just like identical twins no tentacle twins name was Roy Bennett Stanley was a real estate management person real estate lawyer and he and his brother they figure probably in the history of the civil rights movement particularly related to dr. game because he and his brother at one time had in fact men members of the Communist Party in fact they had in New York then one of the principal sources of financing but not only upon his party in New York where the Communist Party nationally they were very successful business entrepreneurs they owned some car dealerships laundromats and he Stanley did on the laundromat in guy akhil Ecuador also saw various entrepreneurial scrap metal and scrap metal business with another left lean person by the name of Joseph Filner whose son was became the mayor of San Diego before he sat himself on the foot over some sexual nonsense anyway Stanley older and it developed a very close friendship with dr. Kane and when dr. Kane began to tell Stan Lee about me as I look back on I didn't know it at the time Stanley was one of the people who encouraged dr. King to see whether he could persuade me to move from California to New York so I could be more helpful to it because Martin has spoken so highly of me Stanley so that's it so Stanley and I became good friends he was a political adviser and Jeff speechwriter for Martin Luther King jr. and I began to join him in that role and there came a time when Stanley's former having been an open member of the Communist Party was used by the Kennedys particularly Robert Kennedy specifically there was a meeting planning the march on Washington in June 21st June 20th in the Rose Garden in 1963 President Kennedy post Martin Luther King jr. sign he says I want to have a walk with you want to chart talk with you and they walk in the Rose Garden and Kennedy says my brother and J Edgar says that one of you you have to close people working with you Stanley Levison than a jackal dough and they are members of the Communist Party and you've got to get rid of immediately and Martin he told me the story lady says well I knew about Stanley I did not know about Jack O'Donnell Jack Odell had been a member of the Communist Party been apparently on the Communist Party's so-called National Committee but he also been an organizer in Louisiana in the National Maritime Union I think and so one thing led to another after that meeting in the Rose Garden I never will forget Martin's have to see you urgently and I said well no I need to talk to you urgently they were just aces now I don't talk about it over the phone so we agreed that I would meet him in the in Washington DC at which point she told me about what had been told to him by the president and that he turns to me rather funny well what do you think do you think Stan is a communist as if Sydney Assembly has returned to us become a communist again and I was already asking me to and see you introduced me Stanley and then I said something like as a matter of fact if Stanley Levison is a communist he's got to me the most flexible him and being a time I was I spent so much time with Stanley every time I see him the only time you're spending with his wife and his young son Andy Andy he and I spent so much time with dr. King and then he's managing these real estate properties for this woman I was slowing I don't know when he has a time to be this so-called communist and he's never discussed it with me well I need you to do it in the I need you to do an investigation I see you want me to do what he says yes so now I think about it but when you start giving into red-baiting he wanted to create a process where he could go back to the Attorney General and said that he had done what they trying to ask and so he made me the chairman of an ad hoc Investigative Committee of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and we were having a special meaning in Asheville North Carolina and I was to investigate about whether Stan Lee was a communist and then report so I then don't I in meet with Stan Lee I tell him exactly what happened no Stan Lee's reaction and I'm writing about this I don't mind telling you so you're not gonna preamp what I'm reading about cuz I'm more people know the better Stanley's a media reaction you have to tell Martin but yes sir immediately stop calling me he cannot call me anymore he said this clear that they want to use me in order to discredit him you you have to you have to tell him don't take any acceptance he cannot talk to me I will not call him if he wants to know anything you and I talk anyway you talk to him you can share it okay now jack is another problem he says we're gonna have to so we had to work out a strategy and his recommendation was that we were gonna have to tell Martin to say that he didn't know what he didn't know he didn't know that Jack whom I became very close to love still love he's still living 90 I'm going on 87 Jack is about 91 the vancouver commissioner and so be a determinate jack let him go but the point is Stanley's reaction was I mean instant his dedication to Martin now when I told Martin Stan his reaction he resisted he said no ma'am I said I'm just telling you forbade it he doesn't know what you to call him he says this you have to you have to do now let me go back and tell you about what Kennedy what Martin said the President Kennedy said to him I wasn't there don't tell me what Martin King told me okay and I think Nick Bryant I wrote a book bystander he reports the same thing almost identical to what I'm going to tell you apparently President Kennedy's walking with Martin Luther King jr. garden and he says and a weirdness civil rights thing together and if you go down we could go down he says I don't want to be in a situation of the of like Harold Macmillan Harold Macmillan was a prime minister labor Prime Minister of the UK government and one of his cabinet ministers Lord Profumo had been having an affair with a woman by the name of Christine Keeler who at the same time was having an affair with a top Soviet espionage agent and this on the disclosure called the cause of Macmillan government to fall and Kennedy said if we have something like that we could fall so you have to take immediate action Stanley was brilliant he loved what Luther King Jr Martin Luther King jr. loved Stanley Levison a very difficult time occurred for me and dr. King and Stanley Levison when some time I think it was 1962 after check my records Stanley got a subpoena from the Internal Security Committee general McCarran committee or something dealing with the communists and so the first question of getting a subpoena first question did we you have to tell Martin and who's gonna tell him and when should we tell him then a related question we both said well I can't represent you I can't and so it was such a sensitive matter Stanley said I want you to use your best judgment as who do you think should best represent me without having any negative adverse effects on Martin of the South was Aneesha province and I had developed a very good relationship so as dr. Kenneth met with William Kunstler and because it was a excellent trial lawyer had his own practice but did some work with the Americans that was Lewis Union and Stanley says well I don't know bill Kunstler you know so I had to go over it and see we have concern in his office and I had to tell him while I was coming to see him and I had to get his agreement for the certain specific conditions that he would represent Daniel Emerson which he did and then of course I told Stanley he is ultimate advice that he should rely on his bill Cullen not me even though we were very close to the lawyer but Stanley all said well he says there are legal issues in their political access via Stanley was Bern smart guy you talk about you had a vision you were nonviolent until you came to 1967 there's this you have sort of a come-to-jesus moment yeah yeah you talk about that November 22nd 1963 John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas November 23rd Saturday I was over 22nd was a Friday November 23rd doctor came flew up to the Guardia Airport to meet with me because he was being besieged about having to write a letter the issue in response to the Kennedy assassination and the elevation of then Vice President Johnson to the presidency so we spent about four and a half hours drafting a statement of Milan's very of Eastern Airlines but I never will forget dr. King coming down the deplaning from Eastern Airlines and seeing me but almost as if he wasn't talking to me this looks like every talking to the public he says you see that they can kill the president they can kill any man they can get to me as he's walking up he said we got to stop all this nonsense about trying to protect him now three people you and I and two other people and dr. King be walking down the street having a conversation and a car would backfire we would continue our conversation and he looked down and Martin would be all kwench down me he had come to the conclusion of the ascendant after the assassination of dr. King after the assassination of President Kennedy my apologies that was more likely than not that's he was somebody's gonna kill him no I never thought about that macabre I mean we thought about it but not so actively until that incident and then I wasn't there all the time I just for a brief period of time but I heard how he was treated when he went to Chicago when he went to go he Illinois s cookie and Martin said to me he says Clarence I've seen some hateful eyes and mouths in Mississippi and Alabama he said what the hate I saw in Illinois was equal to greenest or any hate I see in Mississippi it was really shaken I began to see after this fanfare the march on Washington after the efforts of the Poor People's Campaign and didn't work out and so forth particularly up he went Illinois I began to see the absolute sheer raw courage he was fearless no he was fearful but he was fearless now one of the reasons he was fearless is that he deeply generally believed that no human being no person no entity could protect them except one in his mind being a spiritual being and quoting his words and that was his Lord Jesus Christ nobody can protect me nobody but it but it didn't but it inflamed a certain courage that was remarkable and so I saw him over a period of time of how courageous and fearless he was although he was afraid and it humbled me I'd observed dr. King home he indicated to me into others that there was no human being or anything on this earth that could protect him that he was on the protection of his Lord Jesus Christ so you might say well that's the deep belief of a religious fanatic you know oh I wouldn't call him a fanatic I recall him a deeply committed person to his Christian religion but I also had a chance to observe him who was afraid but in the end he was fearless and it humbled me and I said that this man goes into situations that I wouldn't even think about going into you know I mean willingly initiates them I'd have to say that's a bad dude that is really a bad dude and so I don't remember the exact date but sometime I know it's between 66 and 67 and I said I hope someday to be able to have the courage of a Martin Luther King jr. because law how bad I was trained in yesterday's military how bad I was in terms of football and so forth I had not mastered to overcome fear like he had and so it was the example in which he became an exemplar of the power of non-violence man I said he's got me and that's why I just I just became committed to non-violence intellectually and philosophically and spiritually and then what really got me committed was when he and I will have a discussion about the political effectiveness of non-violence in which he said Clarence segregationists adversaries and that masseur is a pose social justice that thing that they were like to use to blur out or to dismiss the content of the truth of the message of what we're seeking to do is to have all that blurred out but the form in which they think we're trying to communicate it they want the public to focus on the violence of what they're going to characterize as violence because then we can get the focus to public to focus on what they will characterize as our violence then they can dismiss the content of our message so then I said this is one brilliant MF because what he's saying he's saying the reason why non-violence is effective politically because it removes it disarms a weapon of your adversary to obscure and defeat the content of your message no you can't tell me that that's not a brilliant dude I don't know what okay now fast-forward okay I've said this I delivered this message to some of the leaders of black lives matters but not that one make it very clear not and it not in any way that they were advocating violence but I told them about the strategic necessity of having the discipline in that movement taking shout and call them in and some of the names they want to call the carry mother reply cards but don't don't fall for the bait of being violent because that's exactly what your adversaries want to do to obscure the truthfulness to be a message so that's why I said he was without question the most powerful person in the Western world in the 20th century in my opinion and admittedly that's not an objective of the I wonder you talk about you talk so personally about dr. King Martin King is your friend in terms of personally just you know was people talk about how he was funny or irreverent for a reverend he was sometimes that Reverend are there any examples of that things that people would you know well actually quantitatively and the young man for example probably spent much more time quantitatively with the dr. King that I did and Dorothy cotton to a lesser extent my own personal humorous experience said I know he was conflicted by what I call the public and the private persona about smoking I did smoke and he was always he was struggle he really wanted to smoke even when the public anyone to be perceived as a smoker and the other thing he felt that being around him subjected him to have to deal with a double standard because I was you know I sit down openly i order some martinis then after some martinis I'd have a Jack Daniels and and he's like bourbon you know and it looks scotch sometimes we were not that we never ate out of restaurants what we did was always in Negro colored restaurants but many times we would be having we'd be a guest in homes at one time all of us would be staying and we were staying people to fix us dinner for him and others of us who were close with him and I remember being on one occasion where he would say to his host no don't sit Clarence next to me because Clarence said he says that young brother he said he may be a good lawyer he doesn't have good manners sometimes because you turn your back and snatch a piece of chicken right off your plate which I would do if I thought this particular better than mine he would tell people I said that's that's haven't been rolling boarding school we had that's whatever folks came to the table quickly and he had a good way of imitating people you know and he'd been imitating Andy or he would say now have you seen a way Clarence Jones walks into a room sometimes when he's in New York yells a place I ain't walking in there we're just telling me suits and his Rolex watch he says I know where that comes from no humor and he would also some time of sometimes kind of borderland kind of humor in dealing with the possibility that he or somebody else could be assassinated never talking about us but himself but it's a like now Andy and you can do something foolish and you go ahead and get assassinated killed he said I promise I'm gonna Beach the best funeral for you I'm gonna beat you you know for you and that was a way of externalizing the fact he somehow talked about the elephant in the room that we all had to live with he had great affection for Andy great affection for Andy great affection for Bernards sometimes Andy and Martin would be like two boys you know jostling with one another in dr. King's case I thought it was always a case of covering this 24/7 sense of fear which he never talked about but you could sense and the most difficult time of his life was 18 months before his assassination very difficult time he went through with somebody what some could be described as very difficult emotional times he he had a doctor in New York dr. Logan his first name escapes me now married to Mary and Logan personal physician and Martin was in a very difficult period of time in 1967 and I know that dr. Logan wanted him to have some other kind of support counseling it's like he actually counseling for example and they came a time when dr. Logan wanted to talk with me and I wouldn't have a discussion about Martin King without standing Everson and I remember sitting with dr. Logan and he you know we're protecting the patient-doctor confidentiality but generally felt that the state of Martin's emotional health was such that that team maybe should seek some kind of third-party independent psychiatric counseling I'm sitting in the living room with dr. Luke in the Marion look and I look at dr. Logan just as I'm looking at you and I said that's not gonna happen I wish he was very fair-skinned but she turned beet rich he says what do you mean he says you know your lawyer you're not a doctor you're not qualified I said I have no I'm not qualified but there's no circumstance I could conceive of but I could directly or indirectly participate in any circumstance where dr. King would see a third party psychiatrist well you're not qualified to make that judgment I said I know but I am oh I had come meaning conclusion Stanley is not here to speak for himself but I can say that he shared my opinion I know dr. Logan was adamantly opposed to what I'm gonna tell you and which I says calmly I just said there calmly there was no circumstance under which I have any influence that I would I used the bad choice of words because he used those words against me I think I used the bad choice of words because I initially said in the nose it was well I would permit I should have never said that I admit that was the wrong choice of words like Who am I to say but I wouldn't count on us I wouldn't support but rather for mr. Jones that was very blunt and I said if not within 24 hours within 24 days the FBI was find out and they would get to that psychiatrist and everything at Martin King said to my psychiatrist would be immediately FBI fast I can't take that chance no I did not know it until well after that incident so I'm not gonna claim clairvoyance but I didn't know how right I was until years later yes later I learned under the Freedom of Information Act that every single telephone conversation that took place between Martin Luther King jr. and myself from July 13th 1963 to December 31st 1967 when Ramsey Clark became the new Attorney General every conversation was wiretapped secretly by the FBI and the contents of the conversations written down transcribed verbatim and put in files marked top secret fast forward 2015 I'm visiting the former director James Comey in his office we have a meeting of about I don't know an hour and 15 minutes and one time during the course of the meeting he asked me get up and walk to the corner of the left side of his desk that is left side from the standpoint of this thing in there and underneath the glass top of his death is a photostatic copy of the memorandum from J Edgar Hoover requesting authorization from then Attorney General Robert Kennedy to wiretap the phone of Martin Luther King jr. and the counter signature of approval a former attorney General Robert Kennedy James Comey says to me every new agent that's hired and every time there's a meeting of agents in my office I I remind them to stop by and take a look at that memo under the glass top of my does I say to them we never want this great agency to ever become like that again so that's why recently when I was somewhere I think I was the the Aspen Aspen ideas festival and they said we know mr. Jones the Aspen ideas festival so nonpartisan festival we don't like to talk politics the issue of the FBI came up and I said well listen I've been through a lot of FBI directors in my life as far as I'm concerned the best one I've ever seen is James Comey so I don't know about anybody else I hadn't made a lasting impression on me so why do I take this story about that because there was a psychiatric and emotional toll that was taking place I was his lawyer he said and did things in my presence but I think he felt comfortably and sane in doing because it never occurred to him that I would disclose what he had said what I have observed to third party he just wouldn't know it doesn't occur to me and since that is so I don't intend to do so now know I know the legal niceties about well the attorney climbed up practicing law anymore so I'm not theoretically attorney practicing you know nothing really actually for that matter you know lawyer your client dies you know you can be released from doesn't matter doesn't matter under no circumstances do I feel released from an ethical moral obligation because I look back on the texture I remember very well how comfortable he was in discussing very controversial political issues and some personal issues around his family because he did it because he trusted me never even conceived they would never discuss them with a third party and so I don't intend to start today and speaking of those the wife that the tapes and how they've come out what do you say to them detractors people have come to use the you know the personal problems the familiar problems having the the hotel rooms that have been bugged to to try to denigrate litigators attire of his legacy well for those persons who were part of the Christian religion I was raised as a Catholic so let me first address the religious persons and then I'll speak to the secular presidents now after those religious persons and my religious training the last perfect person I know I was taught he walked on water he prayed in the garden into seminary he was betrayed by one of his best friends for 30 pieces of silver and then crucified for a crime for which he didn't come in now that is the last perfect person I know God no Martin Luther King jr. was human was not a religious deity by definition he had but some could judge to be personal defects and shortcomings he was fearless his integrity in terms of his personal commitment to what it is seeking to do wasn't violent that he may own more than one or more occasions I'm not saying that he was I'm not saying that he was wasn't I'm not saying that I observed them I'm not saying that I didn't sir but to the extent that third parties removed even family members on circumstances of which I may have been in which I would know I would see or I were here he was a work in progress and he was seeking to be the very best that he could be his love for his family was unintelligible he was conflicted by traveling so much and by other matters that he may not have felt that he was being the best father a husband that he could be as I said the last perfect person I know alleged he walked on water was crucified betrayed by his very best friends Martin Luther King jr. was a human being and he was imperfect but his in perfection within totals scheme of things in humankind during that seven in that period that I got to know him was miniscule comparatively I'm not saying it was unimportant I'm just saying comparatively given the weight of all the other things in his life oh yeah some people are gonna be uncomfortable but I'm about ready to say no he was assassinated and one of those assassinate you don't say they gave their like didn't give their light the lights taken from them you know but the fact of the matter is he perceived the risk and knew the risk and was willing to go forward any time knowing in my opinion in the last year of his life I don't think there was any question in his mind as to whether or not he would be killed the only question is as mine is when would it occur and yet under those circumstances America 50 years April 2019 1818 african-americans particularly but not just african-americans marry our country capable of repayment proportions soon be coming up on the 50th anniversary of Detroit the rise in Detroit now we could talk about the the commemoration of 50th anniversary of dr. King's assassination in April 2008 II but what people don't talk to you maybe they will talk to you about and some of the FBI files the CIA files month to get disclose it few people know between the riots of the Troy and the riots that occurred on his assassination how close this country came to coming apart people don't know people don't know that we were just just a little bit know the surface of civil war you normally the alienation of the african-american community to be reflected in the choice but you had you had white middle-class people are saying that there's something wrong with the system they're forming did SDS systems Democratic Society the Weathermen there all sorts of things of getting alienated from the system the astute observation that got that Eldridge Cleaver writes about and soul on ice he says why young Negroes are running to get integrated white little class society young White's running got the other way to get out of it so the alienation if a good Penn State the Vietnam War and this occurred they Vietnam or began to explode a little bit later but the point is if you read the 1968 current Commission report and the riots and as we will see in this picture that this was coming out and new and some of the far because this country was about ready to come apart and it's only by invoking the legacy in the power of Martin Luther King jr. were you able to keep this thing together america owes a great debt to this man i was a great day so from here in Silicon Valley sigh sometimes hear people in the Facebook Twitter YouTube computer silence algorithm generation wow you know it was great person so forth but you know he was great because he did what he did and so forth he's but the real contributions he never lived to see it's all information nation technology information age and I say well hold on now now I admire the brilliance of Mark Zuckerberg Facebook and of Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google and of other people but let me tell those young people who have who may see this individual if you foolishly believe if you mistakenly and foolishly believe that you would have had the opportunity in this country in this society to be able to create and enjoy the benefits this technology without the contributions of the foundation laid by Martin Luther King jr. you are historically ignorant and you should be ashamed of yourselves because without you there would have been no country that would have continued on to enable us to enjoy the Magnificent benefits of your extraordinary technological achievements so with all due respect to your extraordinary innovations every day you should walk over to the Stanford University campus and genuflect and fun of the Martin Luther King jr. research and education institute and say Thank You Martin Thank You Martin Thank You Martin after the passage of the Voting Rights Act was her sense of and that high was their sense of uncertainty in the movement of word of where to go next like what would be the next either where the Chicago breast basket fights or like you know well without question first of all I don't want to diminish the achievement of this Civil Rights Act of 1964 there was a high you know there wasn't a special high after the achievement of the Voting Rights Act which came in the wake of the March phone someone Montgomery and the efforts led by John Lewis Jose Williams and mrs. Boynton to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge to register people to vote in summer yeah that was there was no question there was a high when President Johnson convened a special joint session of Congress as he is introducing the voting rights bill for their action and he says among other things there comes a time there comes a time in the history of every nation when special leadership zap our face it's required so it was a Lexington and Concord so it was at automatic so it was in our Civil War and he talked about the special courage that have been experienced by those people seeking to walk across Saron finish and of course you could have knocked everybody all over with a feather when Doc picked Gwen Jane when the Lyndon Johnson talks about introducing his new voting rights legislation for Congress to take immediate action and he ends off by paraphrasing the words of the civil rights song we by doing this we shall overcome well I wasn't with Martin King but John Lewis and others tell me who were with him when they when when when President Johnson made that speech they said that Martin started teams started coming down his cheeks you know it was powerful so that that was that was a very seminal moment and so was it important well I don't have the exact figures but with let's just say within the five year period of time after the Voting Rights Act was passed right you had fivefold increase in voter registration in states like Mississippi in Alabama not only did you have an increase in the number of blacks elected to Congress but more importantly in various southern states not just states in north you had blacks being elected to Sheriff's Department the water board the Water Authority the school boards you have them being elected to already but I'm wondering but after that high like with this sense of what do you do now there was a great it was a great the greatest disappointment of course occurred in 2013 I think when it was one when the Voting Rights Act was challenged in the case of Shelby beholder in which Chief Justice Roberts said that section 5 of the Voting Rights Act which it required those states that headed unchallengeable record-keeping back blocks away they said if you want to make any change you had to first come back to the Justice Department to get cleared three clearance section Justice Roberts says 2013 and 14 I can't remember the data decision that's no longer constitutional that was the beginning of the downward spiral guess what within 72 hours of the announcement of the shelby beholder decision states Pennsylvania Michigan North Carolina South Carolina Florida whole group of states they convene special sessions to rewrite the voting requirements the voting rolls now you would think they would rewrite the bony requirements to make it easier but no they wrote voting laws and make it more restrictive so it'd be less opportunity so that was a major blow it was thinking about after the at that time after the high of the of Selma then moving on to this like to moving to Chicago into the march against fear the Meredith March let's just take Ricardo is that notwithstanding the symbolic effort of going to Chicago and rent an apartment and living there and so forth he underestimated the entrenchment of segregation say in an urban City ok he underestimated that Richard Daley Mayor Chicago does Martin King can do all he wanted hold all the demonstrations shut up and jump up and down all he wanted you know Meredith Daley said somebody was here in my town now Martin again I got the power you don't have any power and he tried to a Millie ate him tried to undermine his ability to make effective in rows notwithstanding he went in rented and lived in a slum and in order to demonstrate his aaanthor authenticity the political power to maintain enforce residential housing segregation was so strong in chicago that he could not break it could not break it and did you also feel at that point whichever these discussions with him of that summer 66 that you know Kings coming north but there's also black power for the march against fear and Stokely that's rising the Vietnam War is right but bomber of course was started in 1965 Stokely Carmichael but it continued to grow in 1966 became a period between 1966 1965 1965 if you can believe it the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had been on the front line the shock troops of the civil rights movement led by a coalition of young white and black students north and south Stokely Carmichael gets controlled with Student Nonviolent and literally does what I call the Soviet Union study purges he purges the organization of all white people all white leaders in to give a damn how dedicated you were if you were white and you were Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee one stuck me a comb I came in he said you go back and work in your community we want to have total control black tower that was that was a very destructive move and it had it had it consequences it rippled throughout the movement and did you feel that time that King was pulled between marching again there's no question about it he was seeking to find his ground he was not as sure-footed he was out he was how you gonna be sure-footed when you're in operating in an urban ghetto remember the civil rights movement was a religious Church space movement you even had black clergy in Chicago who were beholden to Mayor Daley who were opposed to dr. King you know in what this then was this Negro preacher from the South coming in you know they're coming in their territory and so he did not he was not Chicago did not receive him certainly the shadow black clergy community and black political community did not receive him with open arms because he was going against what they seemed to be the self-interest of their patron I'd like to switch a little bit took the FBI when when you first heard about the wiretap back then where's your sense of some people would joke about like starting a conversation sort of addressing the FBI before both of them that's something on the one not to something I'm the one oh you hear about that we would often have conference calls and and IIIi just say as a matter of fact conference calls sometimes would be originated by me like 10:00 to 10:30 at night and you know I had two or three martinis early in the day maybe a little Jack Daniels long having to come from school and sometimes when the conference call would start I'd get very animated and I would say now before we have this conversation I would say no mr. FBI man mr. FBI woman you got your pen or pencil ready before we start to call and Martin would criticize me he said Clarence will you stop all that theatrics you know you don't don't you know that the FBI has more important things to do then you'd be listening in to our conversation they got more important things to do don't you know that hello we were naive well this was this way he was nice he was so sometimes he would become so exasperated with my suspicions that the the cruelest characterization of me of all he says sometimes Clarence you know I love me and I respect you but you really like you're like a left-wing McCarthyite you see an FBI agent under every bed you're just like a left-wing version of Joe McCarthy did you have any feeling about it was it Jim Harrison the SCLC comptroller who was actually an informant is still alive to this day as you know that there was any suspicions back then that that's what yes I did you tell you talk about that I had suspicions for example well I said to dr. King I said you have to assume I said I hope you know your children will that's it they're too young I said how do you know I'm not an FBI agent now you know how do you know I'm not a planner well I don't know I said well you don't know I said you know when every time I mean I don't have something a wire and where he says I don't know he said but I don't think you are well why do you why do you think I said well first of all you always talking about FBI right that could be my cover never challenged me see you don't know but I said Martin you have to assume but right in the ex SCLC there's an FBI informant why do you say that let's take what FBI agents in the communist party and at the CIA can put FBI agents in Russian and I had suspicions about the controller Jim Harrison I did and I told him and his reaction was he was the most loyal the most dedicated employee I said that maybe I said Ben and then and then dr. King's been assassinated right and I'm looking at FBI files are on my own FBI files and sometimes his FBI files can you read the pages of meetings particularly meanings that took place in his office now I remember the meanings and as I read through the meaning I read through the pages there's always one person who was at the meeting but his name is not recited cuz the names are redacted Chuck kept going back and forth I said there's something wrong here some of these means are actually in Jim Harrison's office Jim Harrison was always in these office but you don't see him mentioned and that's what I said uh-huh he was probably the agent now let's switch to another subject to show you the power of the FBI do you know that the number two person - Elijah Muhammad John Darley was a stone-cold FBI agent everything that went on in the minds of Muhammad in the Nation of Islam that went through John Omni or that he had no Intel was a transmitter so FBI's got a person right next to Elijah Muhammad so was interesting they wanted to have somebody there where the money was okay because there was always this allegation there's somehow that dr. King was getting some secret money stashing money so wouldn't it wouldn't uh who couldn't have a more important FBI undercover agent than where the control but he used to challenge me he used to challenge me because he thought that I was a left-wing McCarthy I thought I was I could see I saw an FBI informant agent under every bed I was like the other side of Joe McCarthy you know and I just would always answer I know how the FBI works I know how important you are I know that nothing they would like more than to discredit you you know what happened I mean you don't know I mean the very next day after the march on Washington April 28th 1963 the number two person sends a private emo email to Hoover I think the number two person was devoted to Roach Deloatch at the FBI and he says to Hoover after yesterday's march on Washington it is clear so many words that Martin Luther King jr. is the most powerful and the most dangerous Negro in America and if we had not thought about stopping him before we now must devote our resources to it it is now clear that Martin Luther King jr. is the most dangerous and most powerful Negro in America so from a political standpoint and I just say this as a student of political strategy on the lease Gerald the way I could say that Martin King's efforts in the north were probably a failure and a less charitable way I would say that he had underestimated the implacable intentions of a political power min North maintains segregation and overestimated the willingness of local Negro leaders to support him and that neither of us hence accurately and thoughtfully analyzed the new relationship of forces that existed in the north as opposed to the south we forgot to remember that the hallmark of the strength was the civil rights movement was a church based movement when you left the church space and tried to replant and trying to replace put the tactics on a different kind of base it didn't always work we're leading up to the this idea of the growing sense of Martin going public against the the war and those discussions that you might have had with you and Andrew Young about his journey to you know the idea of publicly coming out against the war and the sacrifices he made about that well when he had come to the conclusion that he could no longer when dr. King had come to the conclusion that he could no longer remain silent about the Vietnam War now initially among his so-called kitchen cabinet of advisers and a young Stanley Levison [Music] professor Redick from Morristown Morgan State University sometimes Cleveland Robinson labor leader Andy young sometimes hairy walk traveled always standing Levison myself Andy young and also Walter Fauntroy the leaders of the peace movement Reverend Lynn Sloane coffin the beragon brothers and dr. Spock very prominent leaders of the war against Vietnam they were reaching out to dr. King and wanted him to get more actively and publicly involved my initial first reaction was that they wanted to preempt the mental of dr. King's national leadership for their own purposes that was my initial reaction and then I began to reflect on it and to see that there were rallies taking place in San Francisco and Washington DC and in New York and Central Park whether 500,000 people was showing up it's almost 5:00 in excess of 500,000 all opposed to the war in Vietnam so I knew there was something but I resisted because I felt that my initial reaction was I thought that they were trying to appropriate then with the legitimacy they didn't have that one thing so we had a meeting a couple of meetings long meetings and was the issue of whether he should he should not publicly oppose the war there were two principal issues that immediately came to the fore one of us express but I think Walter Fauntroy maybe I don't want to say what Andy Young thought but I remember Walter Fauntroy and he echoed a little bit of what I initially thought and that is well hold on Johnson has really shown a failure of leadership in the war in Vietnam which he did initiate was this latest john f-- kennedy he was the successor to the war and politically we had to be very cautious about whether or not we wanted to publicly criticize what could be described as having been the greatest civil rights president president for civil rights since Abraham Lincoln this is after the Voting Rights Act of 1964 yep sorry this is that this is correct that this is after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 this is after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and yeah we're going to publicly excoriate and criticize the man whose leadership without resolution none of this would've been possible of course it was all possible because of the groundswell of the civil rights movement and that but without a president responded wouldn't have happened and so it was very hot and debated what I knew and Stanley Levison knew but others did not know in that meeting is that some time before he made a decision to speak out he had received a cable an invitation by cable sent to Paris from a North Vietnam a peace group in North Vietnam offering to meet him in Paris to discuss how there might be a way of any more he felt that after having received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 that he had a different special obligation rising above his so-called stash of civil rights leader and I said to categorically you cannot go what do you mean I can't go I said I said that would be the worst possible thing you can do at this time sign I said you know the FBI and the government uses against you but they don't know anything about it I said excuse me Martin I say you can believe within ten minutes of that cable being transmitted from North Vietnam there was a copy on the CIA desk and Langley and that they've had it for as long as you've had it and you don't need to go down that direction at this time so we had that discussion discussions back and forth and since I was equivocal but mostly seem to be opposed he says well since you feel this way Claire why don't you try drafting something so I I i did try doing an initial draft now my draft started out by just reciting dispassionately objectively clinically just what the facts were about the war in vietnam and state of the fales of peace negotiation at that time by two paragraphs summary and then I would go and I'd write something I thought was very passionate about why there should be an effort to find a negotiated solution an end to the war but then I would say but on the other hand and then I would write another equally talents passage that would counterbalance what I said before and that's the way I went back and forth the whole letter say one thing but then I was saying I would giving deference to both sides dr. King gets a copy of the speech and he calls me up and he said Clarence I thought you were my radical I said what do you mean he says I don't I don't get this on the one hand and on the other hand you above all people should know that the Vietnam War as either morally right or morally wrong and I'm a minister the gospel how old singer gave my mom I don't segregate my mom and son was just morally right he said you know I love you this is you know I can't all right that's just I can I use this but I'm surprised you even wrote this is the first time but whether it's the first time he ever rejected any trapped completely I had to draft things in which he would and read write subtracting so forth and massage but never be checked out of hand he said I can't use this I went up to the consult with my brother Vincent Vincent morning you know Vincent at that time did about four blocks in Atlanta he said we got to we got I got to write something cuz I got to make a statement of this I want to go to New York and so at the end of the day there so called time to break the silence of speech that he gave on April 4th 1967 to the committee of certainly she started lamenting clergymen in the Riverside Church publicly opposing the war in Vietnam was written by him and Vincent Harding Martin acknowledges they're writing the thoughts and contents were both of them but a lot of the writing was done by Vincent so when I get their letter that they had jointly written and I read it I call him up and reflecting my earlier teachings by Catholic nuns about the English grammar using old-fashioned phrases like the topic sentence I said now I don't know in the topic sentence of the 20th paragraph down are you sure you want to say this well what do you mean I said you have a sentence that begins and says the United States today is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world period I said do you want to say that first of all and if you want us and do you want to start that is the first sentence of it back well it's true I remember anyway in the final version of the speech what they did was they kept the sentence in but he didn't make it first sentence of a paragraph they made they embedded it in America it was their one extraordinary speech of that speech and the reaction to it maybe when he gave his so-called I ever June speech a bully April 28 1963 using current parlance maybe his approval rating was like 60 to 70 percent I can assure you at the time that gave his speech on April 4th 1968 three five years later his approval ratings was probably only 30% at most in the country and what really hurt him and hurt me and angered me is that all of these people who have said he was the greatest civil rights leader of all time and extolled him for his great civil rights leadership then turned on him and then what really hurt him initially then he got over what's when you wouldn't have people like Roy Wilkins presently n-double-a-cp and Whitney Young from the Urban League and all these and and some newspaper liberal newspaper publishers and precedence of Negro cause the university coming out and criticizing him Oh probably of course by Lyndon Johnson to be his he was attacked viciously and a common denominator of the attacks from some of the leaders of civil rights movement that really angered him and said you know dr. King we admire you for the civil rights leadership but you were Nick well minister you don't know anything about foreign policy you know you know anything about foreign policy you should just stick to what you know and never saw never did I hear such anger from him other than when he wrote his letter from the Birmingham jail and he was angered by this full-page ad that the group of white clergymen in Birmingham check out an ad in the Negro and then yeah Birmingham Herald newspaper criticizing him for having come to Birmingham to initiate nonviolent protest and desegregation and segregation and never heard I heard and feel so offended and angered and somewhat betrayed he really felt betrayed and he said I went over they don't know me don't they know that I am a minister of the gospel and became a minister a gospel long before I was civil rights leader as I told you Clarence as a minister of the gospel I do not segregate my moral concerns the Vietnam War as either more alike right or morally wrong but take away from this among other things that was the beginning of a downward national spiral which he hoped that he would gain some moral legitimacy by coming and publicly speaking up on behalf of the sanitation workers in Tennessee it took him a while to publicly come out against the war he must have personally felt that against it long before and knowing that it would create this rupture with with Johnson can you talk a little bit about was it sort of was it affecting him personally did you feel it affecting him personally this struggle to win would be the right time to come out against the war and talk a little bit about watching about the the rupture with Johnson after that I think it was easier for him to struggle about coming out against the war several apartment Lyndon Johnson's just on moral issues religious issues the issue with Johnson was a strategic and tactical question best articulated by someone like Walter for Dwight and even I initially felt it that we had to give him some pause and that is does he as the perceived widely celebrated civil rights leader want to oppose the president that enables the passage of the 64 solarized act and that was singularly together with the movement from sama and everything and crossing the Edmund Pettus pitch enables the passage of the Voting Rights Act did he want to oppose this white southern peasant who had probably been the greatest civil rights president from Lincoln because he disagreed with him about pursuing a war that had nothing to do with civil rights now that premise I've just stated he challenged because he said that notwithstanding whatever rhetoric that Johnson may give about civil rights and particularly this was at a point in time where Johnson had announced of war on poverty he said there's only so much money in the Treasury and with all of Johnson's rhetoric and pious statements there will be no money to implement what he says he wants to do because he is expending all the money most of the money on Vietnam he says the worst thing I get criticized but what's worse there being a civil rights leader who may want to speak about civil rights and some people will criticize me it's worse to have a Negro civil rights leader who can't count he says I can count he says when you know you about to speak you've got to know how to count with the collection plate and so forth I'm not I'm not an accountant they don't have to be a math genius you know if there's only a million dollars and it changed me to fight the war and you just gonna be seven seven hundred fifty thousand dollars it's a spin for Vietnam was only two hundred fifty thousand dollars left to fight the war on poverty and Johnson is giving great rhetoric but he's not giving us any resources he doesn't when he says and that's and that's that embolden him because he felt that not looking at the reality of the use of money was really was really it was really betraying all of Johnson's rhetoric about what he was saying about the war on poverty you talked about his this depression he had and how with the riots in the hot summer and how difficult things got for how he was not so popular he talks about you know his unshakeable commitment to non-violence like did that become harder as he became less popular and then the at the end the absolutely not never never one iota one millionth of an itch did he ever shake or deviate from his commitment to non-violence and never never his position was that if he had to be the only person standing alone he would still be committed to non-violence never and then then the part of that came from something that I didn't have and don't have he comes from a deep a deeper a deep understanding that if he pursues his quest for justice not violently that he is involved in a very noble religiously redeeming cause that is Jesus Chrysler applauded and protected and why would he want to besmirch in any way taint that possibility since he knew that he was right he knew that if you want to be morally consistent and politically effective you have to be committed to non-violence as your form of social struggle otherwise it is you are diminishing at best and at worse undermining the prospects of every being successful and transforming society and in making any fundamental transforming transformative social movement you won't be able to do it because putting about Tesla the means will that means will destroy the purity of the of the ends no matter how horrible what you seek to do if you do it through the process of violence you will have diminished and demean the quality of what you seek to do that's just spirit Lee but politically the brother was so smart he understood that when you are foolish enough to pursue violence is that you give your adversary the opportunity to defeat you because you give him or her the use of violence to obscure the content of your message so that the company a message will never be heard everybody will only focus in the form of your message the violence what about the redemption March and the after the after the sort of hm profit tourists and the the rioting leading up to the assassination of your very source let the record reflect that for practical tactical reasons not strategic reasons I was opposed to his going to a Memphis why was I posed was I opposed to his supporting the garbage train workers no I was opposed because 30 days before deciding and he was gonna go to Memphis he had begged me pleaded with me to set up important meetings with potential donors in New York who would support the work of Southern Christian Leadership Conference which is what I did these are busy people many of them businesspeople Wall Street you know he would have private dinners with them and wish they would make a commitment to make a donation significant contribution so it was very difficult for some of these meetings and I'd set up at least I think at least four within the four weeks and he tells me I'm sorry clients I appreciate what you're done you have to cancel all this I said I didn't come to you you came to me I said yeah I know I said but you can't I said I said you just tell them you can come to Memphis but you can't come now you have to come a later time you can't come now he said no I have to go now and he says think about it how how inconsistent how morally inconsistent it is and how much against it's our overall political strategy one year the least of these the poor people we tried to get attention to the Poor People's Campaign here we have and I've been committed to working with the labor leaders and so forth this is something the American ask me American Federation of something the union leader they were involved in supporting the guard workers I think the fellows name which are Jerry worth he asked me to come down and get involved I can't turn my back on labor Labor's you know they've been so good to me and so forth I have to go and so I said Mort I'm not saying that you don't go but can't you not go do you have to go at this time he said this is the only time it's the time when they most need me so I was opposes going and really angry for my tactical reason because of I had to go and change all these meetings and then after I better understood what was going on clearly was the right thing for him to do what happened you know is that I think the mayor of Memphis is a fella by the name of Loeb mayor Loeb I think he had a very hard line paternalistic white supremists paternalistic attitude for these kazanka these black garbage workers and that prior to the time of the garbage strike one or two garbage strikers garbage workers had been seriously injured by the machinery of the truck and the work and the things that they were asking when that revolutionary was like you know just changed in the working conditions and hours and so forth and so dr. King goes and one of the most powerful things that you see during that time as all of the garbage workers in many of the Union supporters had these sandwich board scientists said I am a man that was saying to Loeb we're not children we wanted to be treated it's a dignity of a man now doing one of the first phases of the march some of the young men took the wooden sticks of the help some of them I am a man signs together and broke them off and use them to smash windows downtown windows Martin called off his participation in the March and then he went in for the next couple of days before the March would resume and he went in from pool hall to pool on the main section of downtown Memphis downtown Memphis confronting some of these young gang members telling them how counterproductive what they were doing it wouldn't do to what we're seeking to do and said to them that if you're going to participate and you want to continue that I've already continued if I had commitment that you'll be non-violence if you continue as I'm walking away well there was community pressure parental pressure cause I didn't want dr. king to walk away but it was it was it was touch-and-go it was touch-and-go because there were thug elements boyhood gang elements ooze whose attitude they wanted to take those pool that will take those sticks at help together the sandwich board and used them to smash windows and were you in New York at the time or I was in New York at the time and when was the last time you saw him or spoke with him the last time I spoke with him was on the evening of April 2nd laden even in which he had shared with me the arrangements that he was going to be speaking that following night April 3rd in a temple Masonic Temple in Memphis Tennessee and had more to do with logistics about Bernardi or be in touch with the office let us know when you're coming in we'll have somebody to come right from the airport have a car take you right from the airport to come right to the temple so on thee evening on the afternoon of April 4 that's what was on the afternoon of April 4th late afternoon I was headed for the airport to go down and see dr. King I don't recall for the earlier that evening on April 4th he had spoken I think on April 30 s book at the Masonic Temple but I know that I was on my way to Memphis it was not on April 3rd it was on April 4th early and as I am rushing to go out of it they go from my home to the airport my phone rings and I and I just have an instinct reaction I'm not gonna answer this somehow I said ok I'll answer it if I was gonna go out and hail a taxi and it's our gonna for me and I said Terry I can't talk to you number everything up he says turn on your television Martin's been shot I said what hangs up I turn on the television and lo and behold all the dogs dr. King's been shot fascinating in Memphis so I I mean I'm stunned I'm then get on the phone I try to call down to Memphis I can't get through the lines busy and so forth I call Harry back his line is busy you can't get anything - phone rings again that's not me trying to reach you Martin's dead what he said well what are you gonna do he says I don't think you'd do anything Eric says I don't think you should do anything I think the Rockefeller family wants to help they may want to make a plane available to us but I only get you two anything should stay put see what's going on I was devastated within the first ten seconds at the television that announced that Martin Luther King jr. was dead within the first 10 seconds the very first immediate thought that came into my mind was they finally got him they finally got him because I knew it wasn't a question of whether there was only a question of when so I told over know what my first reaction was they finally got him do you have any memories of the funerals yes I do what I remember is getting a call from one of the the close members of the Kennedy family by the name of William J vent in Whoville very close friend of mine lawyer able lawyer partner now and company very close former US assistant US attorney close friends Robert Kennedy particularly and he said that mrs. Kennedy would like very much to pay her respects to mrs. King and I had recommended to the family that he would be the person that we should try to can you help when I said yes I'd be delighted there came a day it may have been the day before the funeral I think it was the day before the general in which mrs. Kennedy was delivered to wherever I was staying and we jointly were driven to the home of dr. King Coretta Scott King and I remember asking mrs. Kennedy up the staircase up the stairs to the king home she's wearing black veil verlan study she seemed to be semi medicated and I kicked them into the king home and mrs. King is there I stand back as was sacrum Kennedy walks over to mrs. King the now to widows embrace and they hold one a number in their arms for a while I'm standing back I don't hear I don't I don't hear any other conversations I move out in a way so that I'm out of the room so that they don't feel I'm an uncomfortable presence and I remember escorting Jackie Kennedy to the funeral the next day I remember we talked so much about the king and his struggles but like even you you're living history this history what do you see sort of the link to our struggles today like what should we be doing today what are the messages we should take from King and the work he did the hit work you did together to bring us to activate us to make today a better place go back and reacquaint ourselves with the 11 years of reconstruction after the Civil War to read Howard fases book freedom Road which is a fictional account of how a slave power tried to undermine the reconstruction coalition of white and black people it took place to go and read professor henry phonons pull a surprise book called reconstruction the unfinished revolution to go and read the text and if you can hear and see the voice and picture of president barack obama speech at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the 50th anniversary of Selma which I believe of all the speeches he gave during his presidency on race this is the best by far of any speech he gave during his presidency to understand that challenge is confronting our country particularly those people who would like to succeed in the social justice leadership movement of this giant of the 20th century Martin Luther King jr. you have to refresh yourself on the 1851 a57 speech I must be getting off at Frederick Douglass cave in northern New York in which among other things he said in that speech power concedes nothing without a demand it never has it never will you those of us today particularly younger people who want to take up the sacred legacy of Martin Luther King junior that legacy can be described in two words voting rights I'm sitting watching televisions and some demonstrators are being interviewed by a local broadcaster in New York who are protesting outside of Trump Towers and a young white boy carrying a placard and a young african-american woman carrying an anti-prom cracker are big amused and during the course of the interview they said well who did you vote for why wasn't I involved I thought to myself I said these people are out there gang bangers protesting joke and they didn't even bother to exercise the most elementary available form of power to register info so my first advice for the current generation we used to have an expression in my time about some on wolf tickets people talk badge you know I'm gonna kick the white man's butt I'm gonna do this and do that what is one thing to talk about you gonna kick the white man's butt on line 25th Street and Lenox Avenue the heart of the black community some known thing to sit down and Jackson Mississippi in 1964 written about talk about killing a white man's but it's a whole different so if you care about the legacy of Martin Luther King jr. then you have to be willing to take the tools of power available to you to protect and implement that legacy because if we don't vote if we don't challenge the level of morality going on a certain basic questions we were licorice we just we we decided his legacy so don't just shout to walk around pick it size acquire the political power to implement your point of view that would be the greatest way to honor Martin Luther King jr. the brother that's on the national scene without question my my his William barber the second from North Carolina who has his bar on Monday that is that closest living what baddest dude today that is that is Martin Luther King jr. today he's got it he's got it because these understands the necessity of coalition aeneas and the necessity a vote there is pending right before the United States Supreme Court as of this I don't know when this interview is going to be aired but they're right today in in the last week in July in 2017 there's a major case pending for the under state Supreme Court on Jeremy Andy rigging the voting system in certain states I think the cases come up from state of Wisconsin in the state of Texas the results in this case together with the results of the case and Sheldon V holder which gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 will be the most important pieces of legislation regarding the exercise of power don't tell me you're going to be celebrating the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King jr. in 2018 and walking up and down and singing all these songs and carrying Bacchus don't that all means nothing empty rhetoric almost to the extent of being insulting and denigrating unless you understand that the core of his legacy sitting on a tripod of being concerned about militarism racism and violence yes that's not what's the core non-violence concerned about militarism racism and of course poverty so walking around carrying an empty signs and placards and shouting up and down is nice but as I said perhaps in an earlier part of this interview more powerful than the march of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come in the 20th century Martin Luther King jr. embodied an idea whose time had come and that is you could summarize the condition and the concerns of the african-american diaspora in three words here now can't think of the other one oh yeah all here and now that's sunrise what does it mean we want all of our rights we want them here and we want them now we don't want them in the afterworld now I know he said very beautifully in his last speech before he was assassinated I may not get there but I've been to the mountaintop and I've looked over and I've seen the promised land I know that we as a Negro people would get to the promise but I understood that that was his prophetic belief but the reality is about power go back to that Meredith March um you had several conversations with dr. King leading up to that March can you tell us about the circumstances leading up to it you talked a little bit about how you were what were your four things about it he felt he had to go sort of what'swhat's Meredith got shot well he felt he had to he felt he had to go and I was always concerned about you've made the point you know that you know that the lions roaring is ready to eat whoever walks into the den why do you want to walk into the den now let the lion calm down I thought the wizard I felt it was an effort honest I felt it wasn't an unreasonable or not a reasonable weighing of the risk it was concerned about whether or not his credibility would be undermined by the snick people who frequently refer to him as the Lord you know that he they were frequently said he would only come in and March when it was quote safe I have to quote the implication was after they had done all the people had done the dangerous work well the fact of the matter is he was the person that could bring most national press and attention and so his time had to be prudently managed but he never thought that way he never thought that well I'm gonna wait until I can go in and get all the credit not that it wasn't a scintilla of evidence to suggest it that he thought that he was the least opportunist person I ever knew in my life was was there a sense that once he decided to jump into the march against fear that that that they could take that small Meredith small March and converted into something big yes there was always a fear that there was always a big not just America's margin of the circumstances that if they're not SCLC trained Kadri so to speak who were trained in the cadre had just been non-violence is that he would get all the publicity he would bring the press but he have no ability control the people who were associated with him and if anything went wrong he would be blamed that was always a kind of dialectic contradiction he was in he needed to be there at the same time he was always concerned about being there it would attract elements of it which he would have no control and if something went wrong he would be blamed now the other side of that is if something went well he got a bunch of the publicity and it's caused some resentment you know feeling that he success was unde inappropriately or unjustly allocated to him when other people did equal if not more work so there was some element of that and how did he feel about he was in the video he seems a little uncomfortable walking with with Stokely Stokely say Black Power black oh he's very he's very uncomfortable he's very uncomfortable but he knows that he has to be there and on the one hand to support the courage of Stokely Carmichael without supporting the message or the form of the message dr. King was not opposed to power if anything he understood the importance of a crime of political power but he also understand was to elevate so-called black power of a white power would break into story that was he was seeking to build there was a coalition among white and Negro people black people and so he guarded that job Ashley and jumping forward to the the Poor People's Campaign you know at that point yes yes he had been pushed in a lot of different directions you talked a little bit about the state of the SCLC at the time of that of the planning and the Poor People's Campaign I know there's some internal division about the about the campaign as well well yeah when you when you have a disagreement on a strategy this wasn't just a tactical there's a strategy whether or not you should do it at all this was recurring in a hostile national environment an environment that was less receptive but he felt that and in listening the charismatic role of Jesse Jackson and theirs as leadership at that time he felt that he had no choice that he had to be a part of and exercise the leadership of bringing poor people to Washington similar to what a fellow Randolph had done in the 1940s and bringing veterans to over to the the front lawn in the White House he was trying to bring poor people to Washington so that the nation the Congress would see that these are real people who need help and so what he was doing he was putting his stature on the line he didn't have in the local communities where he tried have organized the Poor People's Campaign say in Washington DC and other places he didn't not remember the civil rights movement in the South was a church based movement what was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of the conference of clergy of various churches so you have been the Poor People's Campaign you're having to rely sometimes on community organizations ministers that had best have a tenuous credibility and some of their communities and so working away from the vineyard that he was most comfortable that is the South the southern based movement is moving into communities which are community based in which you're talking not about ending racism for talking about ending poverty and then there are all sorts of logistical problems because the contribution to the SC senior significantly lower you had the divisions created by the Black Power movement you had the divisions from you being creating among the a civil rights organization themselves he is probably aside from aside from sneaky and George Wylie who had a welfare rights organization while the teen leaders are really consistently tried to focus on the issue of poverty I happen to think that the reason one of the reasons he was so responsive to be active to the campaign in Memphis Tennessee was that he was trying to in some way resurrect the credibility of the SCLC on the issue of poverty that had not been successful at Poor People's Campaign and here in Memphis Tennessee he had a chance to show he could deal with poverty that he was unable to successfully deal in Washington that's my opinion and finally just I just remember seeing you in the Aspen looking at the video with a Michele Norris and you talked about how the gospel was such an important part in those songs was such an important part of the movie oh yeah the gospel was an antidote to fear aside from being an effective organizing tool and then you went to Catholic school you see me you had a pretty good voice when you're singing oh yeah I mean that was you know you can't be part you can't be part of a movie even be a lawyer you can be a doctor but if it if you're in a leadership role in which I was at different stages I was not in Elysian role equivalent to it an indie Young or John Lewis or Ct Vivian I was an advisor but I was first they knew how close I was to the man that they adored and worked for they knew how much he thought of me and knew I turned my own Spurs of credibility you you you you could not have been around them up and then like Martin Luther King jr. that you would not have been inspired he was an inspiration to me if there had not been a Martin Luther King jr. I suppose in the history of this country we would have had to computer generate and create someone like him to meet the challenges of our time Dorothy cotton sang you know she ever forged it beautifully I thought your voice is really you know my voice my voice my extent is that I'm just a derivative imitator first of all I mean I have I know a lot about music and I defy anyone to be around those many meetings and places that I was where every meeting every place involved if it didn't start with a song you wouldn't be in a place of which there would be some singing and sometimes the singing would be at a touch of hallelujah many people would be like what I call comes Jesus singing then people would be jumping up and down like a church meeting so when I walked in and I'm being introduced I said I wanted them to get a flavor of the legacy this man so I walked in and said I woke up this morning with my mind set on freedom I woke up this morning with my mind set on freedom I woke up this morning with my mind set on freedom Holly knew how I knew how and then I segue to Oh freedom Oh freedom Oh freedom over me and before I'll be a slave and go home to my Lord and be feeling you got to magnify that by 500 other people 750 people had a minimum but sometimes a thousand people singing it together sometimes it was their collective antidote to fear it was a collective antidote to deal to give to embolden them to deal with what they knew were armed racist plans people would want to kill him in the first instance so remember the man whose legacy the man whose leadership we're going to commemorate for the 50th anniversary of his assassination in 2018 remember who this man was he was just not a leader he was a minister of the gospel he was the Reverend dr. Martin Luther King jr. he was president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference a confederation of black Baptist churches steeped in the religion the liturgy the Bible teaching the Bible preaching and the hymns and the spiritual that went along with her I mean it was our self-administer antidote to fear and anxiety well we could all come together then it's shining you cannot sing that song if you were with Martin Luther King jr. without thinking of one person's name that's funny New England then you talk about you talk about one of the baddest human beings its fannie lou hamer oh she said to me one day we were together she says you know she says you know lawyer Jones I sure wish I could talk like you sometimes and I looked at her and I put my hand on one of her arms and her arms also quickly swollen because she'd been peed with billy clubs and I bought myself toaster I looked at her and I said you know Fanny knew I sure wish I had one-tenth of the courage that you have and you exhibit all the time she said I said fancy speaking well so-called fancy words that you call them that means nothing those words don't have 1/10 of the power of your courage

Channel: Life Stories

Views: 32,818

Keywords: Clarence Jones, Clarence Jones Interview, Martin Luther King Jr, dr. clarence jones, clarence jones civil rights, march on washington for jobs and freedom, first person account, martin luther king jr, martin luther king jr. day, dr. martin luther king jr. library, martin luther king jr freedom center, martin luther king, martin luther king jr speech, dr martin luther king jr, martin luther king jr for kids, Dr. martin luther king jr.

Id: 6iR4xVS0Yqg

Length: 167min 39sec (10059 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 01 2018