Ben Horowitz Sharing History with Dr. Clarence Jones, MLK's Speechwriter

0:00I want my four children to be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin. That, to me, is still... that's the template. Hello A16Z podcast listeners. Today we've got a very special bonus episode from an exclusive event recorded this week, where a co -founder Ben Horowitz had the rare opportunity to sit down with Dr. Clarence B. Johns. a pivotal figure in American history, who among other things served as Dr. Martin Luther King's draft speech writer. In fact, he's credited with writing the first seven paragraphs of the iconic, I Have a Dream speech. If you think about it, this speech is one of the most iconic in history, and among the few that not only changed the world during its time, but one or its legacy continues to sway culture decades later.

0:56And that means that Dr. Jones not only witnessed history, but he literally wrote it. And today, you'll get to hear Dr. Jones reflect on his time with Dr. Martin Luther King, including how he thinks Dr. King would interpret the challenges of today. Finally, here is our very own Megan Holston Alexander, who leads our cultural leadership fund to properly introduce Dr. Jones and his legacy. I hope you enjoy. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only. Should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund.

1:37Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the company's disgust in this podcast. For more details including a link to our investments, please see A16Z .com slash disclosures.

1:53I have the very distinct honor of introducing the conversation tonight between Ben Horitz and Dr. Clarence Jones. Now, I got to meet Dr. Jones just a couple of months ago and he asked me where I was from. I said, Montgomery, Alabama, he paused like he did not believe me. I said it again and we just immediately started to riff on the things that we remember about it and the shared places and spaces and faces as he just reflected on his time there. And then we'll know this is not an uncommon experience when someone who is from or has spent a reasonable amount of time in a Montgomery and a Birmingham, in a Selma, in a Tuskegee, it sparks something in a spirit of connection with other people who have spent time there or are from there.

2:37And it really just builds a sense of connection because we understand the importance of these cities and the important things that happen there. And one of the reasons why these spaces are so special are because of people like Dr. Jones. Now while he's not from the South, he's from Philadelphia shout out to the Eagles. Congratulations!

2:57He spent an incredible amount of time traveling across the South as Dr. King's strategic advisor, as his legal counsel, as his draft speech writer. He is responsible for the first seven paragraphs of the famous, I have a dream speech. He helped exchange notes that would later become the basis of letter from Birmingham, jail. So thank you so much, Dr. Jones, for your bravery and contributions to that space. So in spending time with Dr. Jones, Ben wanted us to hear those stories and to learn about that legacy that we will all get to share here tonight. So without further ado, I hand it to you Ben to kick off the conversation with Dr.

3:35Jones. All right.

3:42Yeah, so thank you all for coming. This is an honor and I'm excited to have this conversation. You know, what we see when we look at history through the history books and films is just so different than how it's described by somebody who actually lived it. So this is really good. And why don't we start at the beginning? Because it's a very interesting story. So when you met Dr. King, you were an entertainment lawyer and he had caught a case on tax evasion and Tell us about that because you were a completely different person. Oh, yeah, that King was indicted by the state of Alabama in 1964 tax evasion and He had four superb lawyers as chief counsel was at Schubert, Delaney had He had two tax lawyers from Chicago, and he had a young lawyer, and that's young anymore, Fred Gray from Montgomery, Alabama.

4:43But his chief defense counsel touched him with the Lenny. He had known me and had an over exaggerated opinion of my abilities. And so just a Lenny called me and he said, Clarence, this is just a picture. I'm representing this preacher. He's been a dited man and Birmingham. And I need somebody to handle all the legal research. Now when he first called me, I thought he was talking about my going to the library. I was doing an orthodena. California at 27 .51, an orthodena avenue. I was talking about it later. And I said, no, no, no, Clarence, you have to go down. I said, no, Judge, I can't do that.

5:25I can't do that. And he was very, very disappointed and so forth. And then he called me up one early Friday morning. Oh, we had had a conversation, a long conversation Thursday night. He called me up early Friday morning. He said, Clarence, I didn't know it. But you know, the conversation I was talking to you about Martin King. He's in the air. He's on his way to Los Angeles right now. And I told him, taking advantage of the change of time, I told him that the very first thing he should do when he gets to California is to come up and see you and I said, no, you just, he said, yes, I did. And so, low and behold, on a Friday evening, I'm living at 27 and 51 high view Avenue and out in the California.

6:15Apparently the owner of the house called me about a week ago. I remember that. Of course, she knew I would be interested to say that the house that I'm telling you with Dr. King King was one of the two houses in Alphabena that had not been burned down. So she wanted me to know that. She thought, anyway, so into my house, on Friday evening, walks Martin Luther King's window. Now, at 27 .51, I knew I was in. It was an interesting house because it had a, it had, it's still a lot of work. I just hadn't seen it recently, but it had a retractable ceiling. So you press a button and then the ceiling, the house, pulls back, and good weather.

6:59You look at the CS and Gabriel mountains, and it was beautiful. And it was into that setting that Martin King came. It was a very nice day. And he walks in and he says, turn a Jones, you have a very nice house here. I said, yes, I know Dr. King. When I had an impala, I had an impala. Chevrolet, convertible, that my wife had given me on graduation, graduation present from law school. So I got an impala, but it was a lemon tree and so forth. Anyway, so Dr. King walks into this house, walks into the setting, and he gets right to the point. He says, Attorney Jones, he says, we have lots of white lawyers, particularly from the Northeast, from Harvard and University of Pennsylvania, and yeah, I want to help us.

7:50She said, but what we need a young Negro lawyer is like you to help us, or people who are struggling for our freedom in the South. So I listened to what Dr. King said, and I said, Dr. King, your chief counsel, who was a Lenny tome, and I applaud what you were doing, what you're trying to do now, you see, I went to Boston University Law School. Dr. King went to the Boston School of the David. He was three years ahead of me. So when I was in law school, the dean of the Boston law school followed by the name of Howard Thurman. I heard something around Boston about how this had this bright young teacher from the time I had been.

8:29I was my thing. Anyway, so he gets right to the point about how he needs help. And I listen to him. And I said, Dr. King, I like to help you. I said to Judge Delaney, I'll do research and send you, but I'm living here. I can't come. He wanted me to come to Alabama. Can't do that. So we asked him some questions about myself. Some questions about my mother. I am an only child. My parents were domestic household servants. I said, my mother was a maid in the cook. My father was a chauffeur in the gardener. So I told Dr. Keynes to tell him about my background. And he listened and I told him about one of the most painful things of my life.

9:17It was the death of my mother and I told him about, I don't want to digress too much for his sleep. But I was raised by Irish Catholic nuns. I told him this. And so I was raised by Irish Catholic nuns for instance. time I was six and to fourteen. And as Irish Catholic nuns used to say to me and other colored boys, my parents were domestic household servants. My mother was the maiden who cooked my father for the chauffeur. They were too poor to keep me at the age of six so they put me in that Catholic boarding school. So from six to fourteen I was raised by Irish Catholic now I'm at six years old.

10:02The nuns would say, Master Jones, be a good boy. Jesus loves you. We love you and you are beautiful. Master Jones, be a good boy. Jesus loves you. We love you and you are beautiful. That I said that to me. From the time I was six and to 14. So I'm telling Dr. King this. I'm telling you like I told Dr. King. And so when you hear that from the time you're six and 14, so when I transitioned to public school, I believed that stuff. You know? Now I didn't remember all that other thing. We love you, but the thing that I remember was that Jesus loves you. And you were beautiful. So when I went to public school, no, I noticed this is a long answer to your question.

11:08But I got to get this out. Yeah. So just story.

11:16I'm 94 years old today. I don't mean to, I don't mean to day. I don't mean this day. I'm 94, yeah, 94 years old, January 8th, okay? Now I'm 94 years old, let me just tell you something. There is hardly your day that I don't wake up and look in the mirror and I don't think that I'm beautiful.

11:41No. No, it has nothing to do with the objective factors I was not, but that's what I think I am. You understand? So they said a profound effect on me, this little black kid. So I'm telling Dr. King all about this, and he's listening, and at the end, I'm telling I can't help him. And he is quest -former. I mean, really a quest -former. That was a Friday evening. My phone rings the next morning. I answered the phone. He says, Attorney Jones, I said, yes, my name is a door of McDonald. I said, yes. I'm the personal secretary of Dr. King. And you know, Attorney Jones, he forgot he's going to be preaching in Baldwin Hills tomorrow in the Baptist church and he would like for you to be his guest.

12:43No, I had only been in California like a year, but I knew something about Baldwin Hills. Baldwin Hills at that time was like the Black Beverly Hills. So I'm feeling guilty. So I said, I just, please don't leave me alone. So I go, I go to this church. Now I had it. As I said. You went to the church, you were not going to do it. Oh, no, I wasn't going to do it. No, I wasn't going to do it. You like the house, didn't you? Oh, yeah, I like it. Yeah. I'm like, no, I need any other thing, Ben, is that I job up in my little Chevrolet convertible. And I see these linkings and these catlacks. And I said, damn.

13:20And I'm sitting like, third away from the front. I never heard Dr. King speak before. Never ever heard of people before. Now your wife had heard him. Yeah, she had heard him, okay? We was subbing something pregnant. She didn't wanna come. In fact, we had an argument. She said, I'm not gone, but you're going to that church. So I said, oh, yeah, I'm gonna say, okay, I don't make a big thing. I'm going, I don't make a big thing, I'm gone. Now, I had never heard dark keys speak before, never, ever. I mean, I heard about him. And he gets up in the pool, but he says, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, the text of my sermon today is a role in responsibility of our more educated among us to help our less fortunate brothers and sisters who are struggling for freedom in the South.

14:17So I thought to myself, this is one smart dude. I really did. Preaching to one person. I said, here he goes to the most important powerful church in the Black Bush Resid and he, and so I said, this is a smart doom. I never heard him speak before. When I heard and saw him speak, I said, oh my God, it was like unbelievable. I never heard anybody speak like that. And he's going on and on and on and on. And he He comes to a point. And he says, for example, there's a young man sitting in this church today. I wonder who? Young man, a young lawyer. They tell me that this young man, his brains have been touched by Jesus.

15:13They tell me that this young man, that when he does legal research on any problem, He goes all the way back to the time of William Nakonkra,

15:291066 and the Magna Carta. So I'm beginning to think that how the hell of a sad Baptist preacher know anything about this. And then my friends in New York and around the country tell me that when this young lawyer writes down what he finds, the words are so compelling that he just jump off the page At that point, I began to think, when this church service is over, I'm gonna find out who this young man is. Because the way Dr. King described him, if he is as Dr. King described, I'm a lawyer. I need to find out who this man, the Dr. King, is noggin' better. And he goes all the way back and he says, I had a chance to visit with the young man the other night at his home in out of the Indy California and I said, oh no, I said, no you're not.

16:25I'm saying to myself. And then what Dr. King did, it was very unfair. Now I told him things.

16:45The exchange I told him, think about my mother being in a maid in the cook, my father in the showroom of garden, all that and so forth. And then there's an actual poem by Lichten Hughes called Life Ain't Been No Crystal Stair. And what Dr. King did in his area, Dytness, is that he changed the sequence in the words in that poem. The poem is about a Negro domestic. She's working in a house and she's scrubbing the staircase. And as she pauses through the attic, and she says, life ain't been no crystal stair. But Dr. King made my mother the actor. Okay, made her the person talking about me. And when he did that, I started crying.

17:38Because I had this vision of my mother. She died in 19, whenever she died in 1950. Something that was very moved. And as I started to cry, I began to have visions. I'm not only my mother, but my father, who was the Mystic Household Service. And then when he said, I guess I've gotten by once he came, that sort of hit me. And I really started to weep. I put on dark sunglasses so that the people in the church wouldn't see that I was really crying. As Dr. King recounted, my mother particularly, church service is over. He's very popular. So as I was getting myself together, I approached him. He says, the turni Jones, I never mentioned your name.

18:36I never mentioned your name. Turni just walks over to me. He says, sometimes we baptize preachers, I never mentioned your name. I never mentioned your name. I didn't say anything to him. I just walked over to him. I pulled him to me very closely. And I leaned over to him and I said, Dr. King, when do you want me to go to Montgomery, Alabama? And that's what I call making it a disciple. Now let me just tell you something. I've been here for 21 years. And I shared with Ben. I knew less about Ben than I knew about his father and his grandfather. I came up in a generation where there were white people who were liberal.

19:25Many of them lost some of them, communist. and they were genuinely dedicated to the struggle to the aspirations of the Negro people. Some of them were members of the Communist Party, but they were all as white Jewish people. They were all fiercely involved in what we call the Negro struggle. Ben Horowitz comes from a legacy that he should be very proud of. And like, oh, father and sons and grandsons, you know, people have different opinions, people have different journeys. I was being interviewed by Soledad O 'Brien on television from 21 years ago. And so did that O 'Brien, and I got into something about Dr.

20:25Kee would have said this, Dr. Kee would have said that, and I said, so right, you know what you're talking about.

20:32They after, I get a call from a man who identified himself as John Hennessy. John Hennessy says, Mr. John, I'm the president of Stanford University. He said, I saw you, and a couple of other people saw you, I mean, so did that. talking about some of the spirits. And you said, you want to take the time. I said, I don't know where or what I'm gonna do. You want to take your time and write and set the record straight. He says, we have a Martin Luther King, who knew research and education center out here. And I talked to one of my members of the board of trustees and a man, my name is Claiborne Carson.

21:09I'm gonna call you and I said, okay. But Dr. Jones, I have to tell you, humorously when I mentioned named Claiborne Carson, and he said, he knew of you, but he thought you were dead. So I said, Dr. Carson, he's very much alive.

21:26So I ended up coming to visit Stanford University 21 years ago with a good friend of mine, who called Dixers and Lowell Sands over. So I decided what I was going to do. Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that Stanford was trying to sell me. they just wanted me to see what the facilities were like. Hennessey was very nice and Stanford was like, I said, wow, it was a big place, you know? I didn't know anything about Stanford, really. I didn't. And so I go over to the research center and they let me see some boxes of material that they had collected on Dr. King trying to show me how authentic the Martin Luther King research was if I wanted to come there and work.

22:11And they brought a box. And then this box was a folder. And I looked down in the folder and there was a photo static copy of the program from the Marshall and Washington. And in the photo static copy, it was a copy of a note I had written to Martin King. So I saw all this March on Washington program. I saw my note to Martin and I burst into tears. Because I went back and rolled back the cat, as they say. I said, oh my god, this is the wrote a note to Martin King. He wrote it on the program. On the program? Oh wow. And what I wrote on the program was that we were told that Dr. W. E. DeBoys had died that night before in Ghana at 90 years of age.

23:23And so I wrote to Martin on the program, just got where the boys died in Ghana. Maybe the people at the martian noticed it. And I wrote it, Martin got it and he looked at it. And by the way, when they full around, I've read this note, got it. Two or 50 ,000 people like, ah, you know, cause Dr. DeBoys. But when I saw that note, this is the point I want to make. When I saw that note, I thought it was a note. I then began to walk back the cat as they say. I said, oh my God. Dr. Keem took the March program home. The march was on a Wednesday. So he took the program note home. He goes to Atlanta. It has his personal effects.

24:14And Coretta must have decided that this note exchange between Martin and I was so important that she wanted to give it to Stanford. And that's what caused me to just burst into tears. That's amazing. It's like being in a time machine talk to you is amazing. One of the things you wrote in Behind the Dream that really struck me was it was a shame that the film of the March on Washington and I have the dream speech was in black and white. Yes. because the feeling was, you know, in color. It was the joy, the excitement that was out of it. And it got me thinking when I think of Dr. King from the films and even the film summit, he's like very serious, dower, the most serious person in the world.

25:12But then when you read what he writes, and I hear you talk, it sounds like the actual Dr. King was much different than that. What kind of person was he to be around? Humorous, brilliant. Yeah. I call him a spoiled brat. I tell you know, you got your whole life programmed for you. Your father's got this church. He didn't grow up with Irish nuns. Yeah, that's right. Right, right. He was very hard for me to say this, but let me just say this. Martin King was the most brilliant, vulnerable. sometimes personally irresponsible, being prison. I never met. In fact, I let Dr. King know very on in our relationship.

25:59I was not nonviolent. He is especially towards him. No, I let him know. I'm not nonviolent. I was not committed to nonviolence. And people were around him, like Andy Young. And people cried. That's a white man who was his aunt on me. He's going down. Don't you be talking to his non -violent stuff to me? I respect you, and I will defend you. As long as you don't expect me to hit violence, I will kick your butt in a minute. He says, Clarence, and he used to say to Dorothy Carton, we got to make sure that Clarence never is in a situation situation where he can embarrass us. Never would have such a way because he will embarrass us.

26:52And I believe that most of the time I was with him until the last year of his life, something happened. Something happened to me because I began to look at him and I said, you know, I'm just He really believes him. Martin Campbell said, don't you be talking to Bert Marshall and talk about Robert? You talk so bad about the Attorney General Clarence. You know he's just a human being. You guys can't protect me. You got to understand. The way we used to get rid of the tension is that we would do mock funerals. We would do make -believe funerals if one of us got killed. Okay. So let's say they would do a make -believe funeral for me.

27:44And Martin would say, Lord, now come on now. We know he doesn't deserve it. I tried all my life to get him to stop digging all those martinis. Lord, and you know when he came down south and started to dig a jack Daniels, I couldn't get him to stop. But you know, he was a good man, Lord, let him in. Let him in, Lord, let him in, because he did this and he did that. He would try to externalize what we all believe. The reason I am... I mean, I'm not on welfare. I'm breathing okay. I'm not doing that. The reason... You've been in more wealthy if you'd stayed in... No, no, no, no. I'm trying to say something.