MLK adapted a Langston Hughes poem during a sermon to recruit Jones
Dr. Clarence Jones · A Conversation with MLK's Lawyer & Speechwriter: Dr. Clarence Jones · Joe Lonsdale · May 10, 2024 · at 8:38
Dr. Clarence Jones recalls the 1960 sermon at a Baldwin Hills church where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. persuaded him to leave private practice and join the civil rights movement.
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“He took an actual poem by Langston Hughes. Life ain't been no crystal stair. He took that poem, only he changed the lyrics in the poem to make it sound as if my mother was a person in the poem.”
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