Basic Information
Name: Clarence Benjamin Jones
Nickname: The Ninja Lawyer, Clarence Clearwater Revival
Born: January 8, 1931
Died: -
Nationality: American
Hometown: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
WORK & EDUCATION
Occupation: Lawyer
Education: BA from Columbia University, LLB from Boston University School of Law
FAMILY & FRIENDS
Spouse: Anne Jones
Friends: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Stanley Levinson, Ralph Abernathy
Foes: Eugene "Bull" Connor, the KKK and White Citizens' Councils, hatred and injustice everywhere
Analysis
Clarence "the Ninja Lawyer" Jones met Dr. King while being lobbied to join the team defending him in a tax fraud trial in Alabama—which Dr. King eventually won. After that, he remained involved in the SCLC and Civil Rights Movement. As you can imagine, they needed some good lawyers to deal with all the flak that was coming their way.
He soon became one of Dr. King's closest friends and one of the SCLC's most active members. When hundreds of children and adults needed to be bailed out of jail at the height of the Birmingham Campaign, Jones was the man who went to a New York bank to receive $100,000 from Nelson Rockefeller's vault.
But Jones had other valuable qualities in addition to his fluency in legalese. He demonstrated his ninja lawyer skills when he smuggled out the many pieces of paper that would be compiled and edited to become "Letter from Birmingham Jail." He also contributed to the writing of Dr. King's major speeches and was a trusted advisor on strategy and legal issues.
How does the saying go? Behind every great man…is a ninja?
Something like that.