Dons' Doings: Rhetoric Students Attend Lecture by Dr. Clarence Jones

Today’s blog post comes courtesy of Professor Marilyn DeLaure who arranged for our Communication Studies rhetoric students to attend a lecture by Dr. Clarence Jones, the University of San Francisco Diversity Scholar. I’ll let Professor DeLaure fill you in:

“A First-Hand Perspective on American Civil Rights

COMS students enrolled in rhetoric courses this fall were privileged to attend a lecture by Dr. Clarence Jones, USF’s Diversity Scholar Visiting Professor, on Thursday, September 20.  Dr. Jones worked closely with Martin Luther King, Jr. from 1960 to 1968 as a speechwriter, advisor, and legal counsel.  The lecture was attended by students in Rhetoric and the Public Sphere (from all three sections, taught by Professors Burgess, DeLaure, and Sery), Critical & Rhetorical Methods (DeLaure), and Rhetoric of Social Movements (Burgess).

Dr. Jones spoke at length about the power of the written and spoken word, drawing analogies between rhetoric and other arts, including music and painting.  (Jones was trained as a classical clarinetist, and also plays jazz.  His musical background gave him a special skill to hear the rhythms of King’s style, enabling him to write speech drafts that matched King’s cadence.)  At one point, Jones advised his audience to “look at words as if you and your body were a musical instrument.”

Students in Professor DeLaure’s Critical & Rhetorical Methods course had just finished studying King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and his “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.”  Dr. Jones recounted his role in the Birmingham struggle in April of 1963: as King’s attorney, he was able to visit the leader in his jail cell, smuggling in blank paper, and sneaking out the pages upon which King had penned his now famous letter.  A few months later, Jones was in Washington, DC, helping with the planning of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  Jones noted that on August 27, he gave King a few pages he had drafted, which included a simple but powerful metaphor likening the freedoms enumerated in America’s founding documents to a promissory note.  Part way through King’s speech, Jones recalled, singer Mahalia Jackson shouted, “Tell ‘em about the Dream, Martin!”  Jones said he saw King push his manuscript to the side, shift his body position, and then launch into the famous refrains of the latter part of the speech—all delivered extemporaneously.

Dr. Jones took a few questions from the audience, and in his closing remarks, ventured that were Martin Luther King, Jr. still alive today, he would be fighting the attempts in many states to place restrictions upon voting rights (by requiring a government-issued photo ID).  King would be calling for 100,000 people to surround the capitol buildings in each of those states, said Jones, because King believed in the power of the people—“he had complete faith in the power of the people.”

For more information on Dr. Clarence Jones and his distinguished career, see: http://www.usfca.edu/Provost/Diversity/Dr__Clarence_B__Jones/ ”

Dr. Jones speaking to our Communication Studies rhetoric students

Thanks Professor DeLaure for organizing this important lecture! Dr. Jones sat with the Communication Studies faculty at a lunch at the start of the semester, and we were all treated to stories about his work with Dr. King. How wonderful that our students were able to hear him speak as well!