Make It Real

In Memory of Dr. Clarence B. Jones

by Antar Davidson

Dr. Clarence B. Jones, Spill the Honey’s founding chairperson, spent his life turning words into responsibility. History rightly remembers him as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s lawyer, adviser, and draft speechwriter, and as a strategist close to some of the defining moments of the Civil Rights Movement. But Clarence never treated history as finished. 

In 2012, when Dr. Shari Rogers and I helped bring him to Dilla Day at Detroit’s Fillmore Theatre, he stood before a packed Black and White audience brought together through hip-hop. He told us, “Use your music, use your poetry, use your creative abilities to tell the story and make it real.” Days later, writing in the Huffington Post, he reflected on the “black and white mosaic” he had encountered at the Fillmore and on rap artists’ ability to communicate the urgent issues facing our communities. That room, he wrote, gave him cause for hope and challenged us “to believe again.” Clarence could look at a hip-hop concert and see more than an audience for history. He saw it as its next participants.

Following that event, Clarence gave me a personal charge I have carried since. It was part of what inspired me to stand up years later while working with children separated from their parents at the border. It has continued to guide me through the development of Bars & Bridges and the effort to turn creative expression into voice, agency, and opportunity. The older I become, the more I hear that charge alongside another of Clarence’s insights: economic opportunity as the “real new frontier” of civil rights. He asked what good it was to have the legal right to stay in a hotel if you could not afford the room. 

That is part of the unfinished work Dr. Clarence B. Jones leaves us. Extraordinary sacrifice should not be required for ordinary justice, and freedom is incomplete when people have rights without real pathways to use them. Clarence made history feel unfinished. He told us to use what we had, to tell the story and make it real. Our responsibility is to keep doing exactly that.

Dr. Clarence B. Jones, Spill the Honey’s founding chairperson, spent his life turning words into responsibility. History rightly remembers him as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s lawyer, adviser, and draft speechwriter, and as a strategist close to defining moments of the Civil Rights Movement. But Clarence never treated history as finished. In 2012, when Dr. Shari Rogers and I helped bring him to Dilla Day at Detroit’s Fillmore Theatre, he stood before a packed Black-and-White audience brought together through hip-hop and told us, “Use your music, use your poetry, use your creative abilities to tell the story and make it real.” Clarence could look at a hip-hop concert and see more than an audience for history. He saw its next participants.

Following that event, Clarence gave me a personal charge that I have carried ever since. It helped inspire me years later while working with children separated from their parents at the border, and it continues to guide my work through Bars & Bridges and our effort to turn creative expression into voice, agency, and opportunity. I also carry another of Clarence’s insights: He called economic opportunity the “real new frontier” of civil rights, asking what good it was to have the legal right to stay in a hotel if you could not afford the room.

That is part of the unfinished work Dr. Clarence B. Jones leaves us. Extraordinary sacrifice should not be required for ordinary justice, and freedom is incomplete when people have rights without real pathways to use them. Clarence told us to use what we have, tell the story, and make it real. Our responsibility is to keep doing exactly that.