MLK "Dream" speechwriter at ComNet15 

Dr. Clarence B. Jones helped draft iconic "I have a dream..." speech

Clarence B. Jones, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s personal adviser and draft speechwriter, will be a featured keynoter at ComNet15, The Communications Network's annual conference in San Diego.

Dr. Jones, a scholar in residence at Stanford University's Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, will appear at ComNet15 on Friday October 2, 2015.

"Early in the summer [of 1963], Martin asked some trusted colleagues at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for their thoughts on his address... But it wasn't until mid-August that Martin had Stanley [Levinson] and I work up a draft. And though I had that material with me when I arrived at the Willard Hotel in Washington for a meeting on the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 27, Martin still didn't know what he was going to say," recalls Jones, co-author of Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech That Transformed a Nation, in a 2011 op-ed for The Washington Post.  

Listen to Jones's memories of drafting the historic 'Dream" speech and how it almost didn't happen on NPR. Watch Jones reflect on the speech on PBS.