As President Biden heads to Atlanta today to promote voting rights, I am thinking of the man I am so deeply privileged to call my friend: Dr. Clarence Jones.
As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s lawyer and friend, Clarence smuggled the paper into the Birmingham Jail that Dr. King needed and then smuggled The Letter from The Birmingham Jail –a masterpiece–out of jail for Dr. King.
As his speechwriter, Clarence wrote the first part of the I Have a Dream speech. He too risked his life to secure voting rights for all. He too has, like his friend the late Rep. John Lewis, stayed focused on the North Star of freedom for all—a nonviolent warrior against all kinds of racial and religious bias, including anti-Semitism,
I was honored (I still can’t quite believe this happened) to be invited to the virtual 91st birthday party for Clarence last weekend. I observed the faces and listened to the voices of the Civil Rights Movement leaders—giants on whose shoulders we all stand. I thought about what it must have been like to wake up knowing that you were going to face beatings, imprisonment in highly dangerous jails, even death that day. What would it have been like to go to sleep the night before, knowing that the next day would bring these perils?
How did I come to know Clarence Jones? Through acute embarrassment. Anna Deavere Smith—the utterly extraordinary actress and artist (these puny words do not do her justice) had been invited to Stanford to perform her Letter from the Birmingham Jail. I knew that my friend, Paul Costello had been very instrumental in both the invitation and in her willingness to do this. Every nerve ending in my body vibrated with the awareness that I would be able to see this performance.
But I did not want it to be just a “one-night” experience—that would move students and faculty briefly and then recede into the back recesses of memory. So, I called Paul and mentioned this. He told me that Anna was thinking along the same lines and offered to put me in touch with her. Shortly, I found myself speaking to this extraordinary human being and suggesting that certain “warm spots” of student activism on campus could be explicitly invited—and that this might lead to a longer-term commitment to Dr. King’s goals and great work. She enthusiastically agreed.
The night of the performance, Stanford’s Memorial Church was packed. I noticed a lot of young people. I have no words—none whatsoever–adequate to describe Anna’s brilliant performance. This video excerpt–which should be viewed by every admirer (or foe) of Dr. King–will speak far more eloquently than I ever could: :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpl5rN96JPU
After the performance, an associate dean at Stanford came out on stage to engage the audience. She asked questions and the audience was asked to stand, raise hands, or speak in response. One question: “How many agree that Black Lives Matter?” The entire audience stood, including, of course, me. She then asked: “How many agree that All Lives Matter?” All of a sudden, I experienced a crisis of conscience. I was a committed Quaker. Don’t Quakers believe that All Lives Matter? I thought of my work in Latinx communities in the Bay Area. Didn’t Brown Lives Matter?
So, I half stood/half crouched. An awkward position, to say the least. It did not escape the notice of the associate dean. Singling me out, she asked me why I was taking this position. I stumbled through an almost incoherent description of my feelings. “Young Lady,” boomed a loud voice, “you are clearly unaware of the facts.’’ I turned around and saw that Clarence Jones was standing and was addressing me.
I thought I was going to sink through the floor. I knew that Dr. Jones was often on campus, as an advisor to the Martin Luther King, Jr Papers Project—and I had hoped that one day I would meet him. As a follower of the Civil Rights Movement since the age of 15, he was certainly a hero to me. “Oh no, oh no, I thought, anything but this! “Dr. Jones proceeded to reel off statistic after statistic--- proving that while racial profiling and brutality affected many, it disproportionately impacted Black human beings—and especially Black men.
I sat down, distraught that this—this—had been the way I had come into the consciousness of Dr. Clarence Jones. And, of course, he was right. (This I knew personally, as the aunt and great-aunt of African-Americans).
As the performance concluded, I saw that Dr. Jones, flanked by students, was moving to the front of the auditorium, obviously to speak directly to Anna Deavere Smith. I quickly got up and, standing behind him, I tugged gently at his sleeve. He turned around and looked at me. “Dr. Jones,” I blurted out, “you have changed my mind. You have educated me. I just wanted you to know that.” He smiled at me and said “It is just wonderful that you sought me out to tell me that. Thank you.”
The next day, I was approaching the house of my colleague Victor Carrion, who was hosting a luncheon in honor of Anna Deavere Smith, and I saw Dr. Jones approaching behind me. As we entered the foyer together, I smiled at him. He beamed at me. “You are the person who told me that I had changed your mind, aren’t you?”, he said. “I was telling my wife last night; I think I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who sought me out to tell me that.”
His generous spirit cracked open my usual reserve about family matters. I told him that I had two African American great-nephews who, as they approached their adolescent and young adult years, I worried about. He looked at me and said that every night, he thought about these young Black males and asked himself what he could do more to protect them.
And then, in a flash, we both started crying. We stood there in a beautiful home overlooking the tranquil hills of California on a sunny day and the tears began to flow. “Not one more youngster,” he said, as the tears slid down his cheek, “Not one more.”
Later that day, Clarence spoke to me about the nightmares that, for decades, pursued these veterans of nonviolence —of snarling dogs, blasting fire hoses, brutal racists wielding clubs, terror raids by the Ku Klux Klan. (Again, I cannot quite believe that I, a tiny infinitesimal speck in the long journey towards racial equality, was given this moment of greater clarity about the huge, lingering price of the Movement on so many of these courageous spiritual warriors wielding nonviolence.)
I told him: “You changed the lives of us all. My children and grandchildren got to grow up in a better world because of you. We are forever indebted to you.” With his famous twinkle, and his gracious generosity, he turned to me and said “You young White people helped. It helped when you came South or organized up North.” “But we could go home,” I said. “If things got too rough, we could go home to communities where we were safe. The Movement veterans who lived in the South or in racist Northern communities could not.”
At 91, Clarence is still hard at work. He recently co-founded the Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice at the Jesuit institution, University of San Francisco, with Jonathan Greenberg, a law school professor.
I write today as a voice of support for passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. Please call your Senators at (202) 224-3121 and urge them to vote for these bills. They are likely to come up for a vote as early as next week.
I write today as a voice of support for the Biden-Harris Administration’s successful efforts to support Speaker Pelosi in House passage of both voting rights protection bills—and the role of my own Congresswoman, Rep. Anna Eshoo in this victory. I write as a voice of recognition and support and for the current efforts of the White House and of Majority Leader Schumer to promote Senate passage.
And I write today as one voice of profound gratitude to Dr. Clarence Jones and the many other Civil Rights Movement leaders—and their families. Their work needs to be chronicled, advanced, supported in the education of the young and rising generation of leaders. Those who wish to support the ongoing work of the USF Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice in achieving these goals can do so by donating here: https://www.usfca.edu/institute-nonviolence-social-justice
We shall overcome.
Peggy Daly Pizzo
Founder and President, Lift Each Other Up, LLC (www.lifteachotherupllc.com)
Former Associate Director, The White House Domestic Policy Staff
January 11, 2022
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