Ben Horowitz Sharing History with Dr. Clarence Jones, MLK's Speechwriter
55:45 Share

I want my four children to be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin. That, to me, is still—that's the template.

Hello, A16Z podcast listeners. Today, we've got a very special bonus episode from an exclusive event recorded this week, where our co-founder Ben Horowitz had the rare opportunity to sit down with Dr. Clarence B. Jones, a pivotal figure in American history, who, among other things, served as Dr. Martin Luther King's draft speechwriter. In fact, he's credited with writing the first seven paragraphs of the iconic I Have a Dream speech.

If you think about it, this speech is one of the most iconic in history and among the few that not only changed the world during its time, but one where its legacy continues to sway culture decades later. And that means that Dr. Jones not only witnessed history, but he literally wrote it. And today, you'll get to hear Dr. Jones reflect on his time with Dr. Martin Luther King, including how he thinks Dr. King would interpret the challenges of today.

Finally, here is our very own Megan Holston-Alexander, who leads our Cultural Leadership Fund, to properly introduce Dr. Jones and his legacy. I hope you enjoy.

As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see as16z.com slash disclosures.

I have the very distinct honor of introducing the conversation tonight between Ben Horitz and Dr. Clarence Jones. Now, I got to meet Dr. Jones just a couple of months ago, and he asked me where I was from. I said Montgomery, Alabama. He paused like he did not believe me. I

I said it again, and we just immediately started to riff on the things that we remember about it and the shared places and spaces and faces as he just reflected on his time there. And Ben will know this is not an uncommon experience when someone who is from or has spent

a reasonable amount of time in a Montgomery, in a Birmingham, in a Selma, in a Tuskegee. It sparks something in a spirit of connection with other people who have spent time there or are from there. And it really just builds a sense of connection because we understand the importance of these cities and the important things that happen there. And one of the reasons why these spaces are so special are because of people like Dr. Jones.

Now, while he's not from the South, he's from Philadelphia. Shout out to the Eagles. Congratulations. He spent an incredible amount of time traveling across the South as Dr. King's strategic advisor, as his legal counsel, as his draft speechwriter. He is responsible for the first seven paragraphs of the famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

He helped exchange notes that would later become the basis of Letter from Birmingham Jail. So thank you so much, Dr. Jones, for your bravery and contributions to that space. So in spending time with Dr. Jones, Ben wanted us to hear those stories and to learn about that legacy that we will all get to share here tonight. So without further ado, I hand it to you, Ben, to kick off the conversation with Dr. Jones. All right. Thank you.

Yeah, so thank you all for coming. This is an honor, and I'm excited to have this conversation. You know, what we see when we look at history through the history books and films is just so different than how it's described by somebody who actually lived it. So this is really good. And why don't we start at the beginning, because it's a very interesting story. So when you met Dr. King, you were an entertainment lawyer, and he had caught a case on tax evasion.

And tell us about that, because you were a completely different person. Oh, yeah. Dr. King was indicted by the state of Alabama in 1960 for tax evasion. And he had four superb lawyers. His chief counsel was Judge Schubert Delaney, a trial lawyer from New York. He had two tax lawyers from Chicago. And he had a young lawyer, he's not young anymore, Fred Gray.

from Montgomery, Alabama. But his chief defense counsel, Judge Hubert Delaney, he had known me and had an over-exaggerated opinion of my abilities. And so Judge Delaney called me and he said, Clarence, this preacher, I'm representing this preacher, has been indicted in Birmingham and I need somebody to handle all the legal research. Now, when he first called me,

I thought he was talking about my going to the library. I was living in Altadena, California, at 2751 Altadena Avenue, which I'll talk about later. And he said, no, no, no, Clarence, you have to go down. I said, no, Judge, I can't do that. I can't do that. And he was very, very disappointed and so forth. And then he called me up one early Friday morning. Oh, we had had a conversation, a long conversation Thursday night.

He called me up early Friday morning and said, Clarence, I didn't know it, but you know the conversation I was talking to you about Martin King, he's in the air. He's on his way to Los Angeles right now. And I told him, taking advantage of the change of time, I told him that the very first thing he should do when he gets to California is to come up and see you. And I said, no, you didn't. He said, yes, I did. And so lo and behold,

On a Friday evening, I'm living at 2751 Highview Avenue in Altadena, California. Parenthetically, the owner of the house called me about a week ago, remember? Because she knew I would be interested to say that the house that I'm telling you with Dr. King came was one of the two houses in Altadena that had not been burned down. So she wanted me to know that, she thought. Anyway, so into my house, one on Friday evening, walks Martin Luther King Jr.,

Now, at 2751 Highview Avenue, it was an interesting house because it still has, I just haven't seen it recently, but it had a retractable ceiling. You press a button and then the ceiling of the house pulls back. In good weather, you look at the San Gabriel Mountains and it's beautiful. It was into that setting.

that Martin King came. It was a very nice day. And he walks in and he says, "Attorney Jones, you have a very nice house." And I said, "Yes, I know, Dr. King." And I had an Impala. I had an Impala Chevrolet convertible that my wife had given me as a graduation present from law school, you see. So I got an Impala, but it was a lemon tree and so forth. Anyway, so Dr. King walks into this house, walked in the setting,

And he gets right to the point. He says, "Attorney Jones," he says, "We have lots of white lawyers, particularly from the Northeast, from Harvard and University of Pennsylvania and Yale who want to help us." He said, "But what we need are young Negro lawyers like you to help us, or people who are struggling for our freedom in the South."

So I listened to what Dr. King said, and I said, Dr. King, your chief counsel, Hubert Delaney, told me, and I applaud what you were doing, what you're trying to do now. See, I went to Boston University Law School. Dr. King went to the Boston School of Divinity. He was three years ahead of me. So when I was in law school, the dean of the Boston Law School, a fellow by the name of Howard Thurman,

I'd heard something around Boston about how this had this bright young preacher from the Lion's Bay. That wasn't my thing. Anyway, so he gets right to the point about how he needs help. And I listened to him and I said, "Dr. King, I'd like to help you." I said to Judge Delaney, "I'll do research and send you, but I'm living here. I can't come." He wanted me to come to Alabama. Can't do that. So he asked me some questions about myself, some questions about my mother.

I'm an only child. My parents were domestic household servants. I said my mother was a maid and a cook, and my father was a chauffeur and a gardener. So I told Dr. King this, told him about my background. And he listened. And I told him about one of the most painful things in my life. It was the death of my mother. And I told him about, I don't want to digress too much recently, but I was raised by Irish Catholic nuns. I told him this.

So I was raised by Irish Catholic nuns from the time I was six and to 14. As Irish Catholic nuns used to say to me and other colored boys, my parents were domestic household servants, my mother was a maid and a cook, my father was a chauffeur. They were too poor to keep me at the age of six, so they put me in the Catholic boarding school. So from six to 14, I was raised by Irish Catholic nuns. Now, in the six years old,

The nuns would say, "Master Jones, be a good boy. Jesus loves you. We love you, and you are beautiful. Master Jones, be a good boy. Jesus loves you. We love you, and you are beautiful." They said that to me from the time I was six until 14. So I'm telling Dr. King this.

I'm telling you like I told Dr. King. And so when you hear that from the time you're six to 14. So when I transitioned to public school, I believed that stuff. You know? Now, I didn't remember all that other things. We love you. But the thing that I remember was that Jesus loves you and you were beautiful. So when I went to public school, I know this is a long answer to your question. You can come.

But I got to get this out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a good story. I'm 94 years old today. I don't mean today. I don't mean this day. I'm 94 years old January 8th, okay? Now I'm 94 years old. Let me just tell you something. There is hardly a day that I don't wake up and look in the mirror and I don't think that I'm beautiful. Now...

Now, it has nothing to do with the objective facts as to whether I am or not, but that's what I think I am. You understand? So this had a profound effect on me, this little black kid. So I'm telling Dr. King all about this, and he's listening, and at the end, I'm telling him I can't help him. And he is crestfallen. I mean, really crestfallen. That was a Friday evening. My phone rings the next morning. I answer the phone.

He says, "Attorney Jones." I said, "Yes, my name is Dora McDonald." I said, "Yes, I'm the personal secretary of Dr. King." And you know, Attorney Jones, he forgot he's going to be preaching in Baldwin Hills tomorrow, the Baptist Church, and he would like for you to be his guest. Now, I had only been in California like a year, but I knew something about Baldwin Hills.

Baldwin Hills at that time was like the Black Beverly Hills. So I'm feeling guilty. So I said, "Ah, this preacher won't leave me alone, so I'll go." I go to this church.

No, I had, as I said. So before you went to the church, you were not going to do it? Oh, no, I wasn't going to do it. No, I wasn't going to do it. You liked the house. Oh, yeah, I liked it. Yeah, I liked the house. And the other thing, Ben, is that I drive up in my little Chevrolet convertible, and I see these Lincolns and these Cadillacs. And I said, damn. And I'm sitting like a third away from the front. I'd never heard Dr. King speak before. Never, ever heard him speak before. Now, your wife had heard him.

Yeah, she had heard of him. Yeah. OK? We were seven-something pregnant. She didn't want to come. In fact, we had an argument. She says, I'm not going, but you're going to that church. So I said, OK. I said, OK, don't make a big thing. I'm going. Don't make a big thing. I'm going. Now, I had never heard Dr. King speak before. Never, ever. I mean, I heard about him. And he gets up in the pulpit, and he says, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, the text of my sermon today

is a role and responsibility of our more educated among us to help our less fortunate brothers and sisters who are struggling for freedom in the South. So I thought to myself, this is one smart dude. I really did. He's preaching to one person. I said...

Here he goes to the most important, powerful church in the black bourgeoisie. And so I said, this is a smart dude. I'd never heard him speak before. When I heard and saw him speak, I said, oh, my God. It was like unbelievable. I'd never heard anybody speak like that. And he's going on and on and on and on. And he comes to a point. And he says, for example, there's a young man sitting in this church today. Yeah.

I wonder who. Young man, a young lawyer. They tell me that this young man, his brains have been touched by Jesus. They tell me that this young man, that when he does legal research on any problem, he goes all the way back to the time of William the Conqueror, 1066 and the Magna Carta.

So I'm beginning to think, now how the hell does that Baptist preacher know anything about this? And then my friends in New York and around the country tell me that when this young lawyer writes down what he finds, the words are so compelling, they just jump off the page. At that point, I began to think, when this church service is over, I'm going to find out who this young man is.

Because the way Dr. King described him, if he is as Dr. King described, I'm a lawyer. I need to find out who this man that Dr. King is talking about. And he goes all the way back and he says, I had a chance to visit with this young man the other night at his home in Altadena, California. And I said, oh, no. I said, no, you're not. I'm saying to myself. And then what Dr. King did was very unfair.

Now, I told him things. The exchange that he asked me, I told him things that I didn't think he'd want to repeat to 1,500 strangers. And I told him things about my mother being a maid and a cook, my father a chauffeur in the garden, and all that and so forth. And then there's an actual poem by Langston Hughes called Life Ain't Been No Crystal Stare. And what Dr. King did in his eruditeness is that he...

change the sequence and the words in that poem. The poem is about a Negro domestic. She's working in this house and she's scrubbing the staircase. And as she pauses periodically, she says, life ain't been no crystal stair. But Dr. King made my mother the actor, okay? Made her the person talking about me. And when he did that, I started to cry because I had this vision of my mother. She died and

19, whenever she died, 1950, something. I was very moved. As I started to cry, I began to have visions of not only my mother, but my father who was a domestic household servant. Then when he said, he had forgotten, but once he came, that hit me and I really started to weep. I put on dark sunglasses so that the people in the church wouldn't see that I was really crying. As Dr. King recounted,

My mother particularly. Church service is over. He's very popular. So as I'm getting myself together, I approach him. He sees me coming over. He says, "Attorney Jones, I never mentioned your name. I never mentioned your name." I just walked over. He says, "Sometimes we Baptist preachers, I never mentioned your name. I never mentioned your name." I didn't say anything to him. I just walked over to him. I pulled him to me very closely, and I leaned over to him, and I said, "Dr. King,

"When do you want me to go to Montgomery, Alabama?" And that's what I call the making of a disciple. Now, let me just tell you something. I've been here for 21 years, and I shared with Ben. I knew less about Ben than I knew about his father and his grandfather. I came up in a generation where there were white people who were liberal, many of them lusters, some of them communists. And they were genuinely dedicated to the struggle, to the aspirations of the Negro people.

Some of them were members of the Communist Party, but they were all as white Jewish people. They were all fiercely involved in what we call the Negro struggle. Ben Horowitz comes from a legacy that he should be very proud of. And like all father and sons and grandsons, you know, people have different opinions. People have different journeys. I was being interviewed by Soledad O'Brien on television some 21 years ago.

And Soledad O'Brien and I got into something about Dr. King would have said this, Dr. King would have said that. And I said, Soledad, you don't know what you're talking about. The day after, I get a call from a man who identified himself as John Hennessy. John Hennessy says, Mr. Johnson, I'm the president of Stanford University. He said, I saw you and a couple of other people saw you having Soledad talking about some of the spirit. He says, what?

And you said you wanted to take the time. I said, "I don't know where or what I'm going to do." You want to take your time and write and set the record straight. He says, "We have a Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Center out here." And I talked to one of my members of the board of trustees, and a man by the name of Claiborne Carson is going to call you. And I said, "Okay." But Dr. Jones, I have to tell you humorously what I mentioned, the name Claiborne Carson, he says, "He knew of you, but he thought you were dead."

So I said to Dr. Carson, no, he's very much alive. So I ended up coming to visit Stanford University 21 years ago with a good friend of mine, Carl Dixon from Los Angeles. So I decided what I was going to do. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Stanford was trying to sell me. They just wanted me to see what the facilities were like. Hennessy was very nice, and Stanford was like, I said, wow, it was a big place, you know.

I didn't know anything about Stanford. Really, I didn't. And so I go over to the research center and they let me see some boxes of material that they had collected on Dr. King trying to show me how authentic the Martin Luther King research center was if I wanted to come there and work. And they brought a box and in this box was a folder. And I looked down in the folder and there was a photostatic copy of the program

from the March on Washington and in the photostatic copy, it was a copy of a note I had written to Martin King. So I saw this March on Washington program, I saw my note to Martin and I burst into tears because I went back and rolled back the cat as they say. I said, "Oh my God, this is a photostatic copy

of the actual program that I wrote a note to Martin King. He wrote it on the program? On the program. Oh, wow. And what I wrote on the program was that we were told that Dr. W.E. Du Bois had died that night before in Ghana at 90 years of age. And so I wrote to Martin on the program

Just got word Dr. Du Bois died in Ghana. Maybe the people at the march should know this. And I wrote it. Martin got it and he looked at it. And by the way, when A. Philip Randolph read this note by the 250,000 people like I, you know, because Dr. Du Bois. But when I saw that note, this is the point I want to make. When I saw that note, that photo of the note, I then began to walk back the cat, as they say. I said, oh my God. Dr. King took the march program home.

The march was on a Wednesday. So he took the program note home, he goes to Atlanta, he does his personal effects, and Coretta must have decided that this note exchange between Martin and I was so important that she wanted to give it to Stanford. And that's what caused me to just burst into tears. That's amazing. It's like being in a time machine talking to you. It's amazing.

Hey, it's Steph. Look, we cover a lot of successful businesses here on the A16C podcast. And one common thread across every successful company, well, they've figured out marketing. But as channels are saturating and the supply of content increases by the second, it's hard to stand out amongst the noise. So with marketing only becoming harder to grok...

I look to two of the sharpest marketers in the world, HubSpot CMO Kip Bodnar and SVP of Marketing Kieran Flanagan, who host Marketing Against the Grain. They break down all the latest marketing trends and growth tactics before the masses catch on, all with a healthy dose of AI. Plus, you may even hear me on an episode or two.

So whether you're trying to grow a company, newsletter, YouTube channel, or just simply want to keep your distribution edge, check out the podcast Marketing Against the Grain, wherever you're listening now.

One of the things you wrote in Behind the Dream that really struck me was it was a shame that the film of the March on Washington and I Have the Dream speech was in black and white. Yes. Because the feeling was, you know, in color. It was the joy, the excitement that was out of it. And it got me thinking, when I think of Dr. King...

from the films and even the film summit, he's like very serious, dour, the most serious person in the world. But then when you read what he writes and I hear you talk, it sounds like the actual Dr. King was much different than that. What kind of person was he to be around? -Humorous, brilliant. -Yeah. I called him a spoiled brat. I tell you, you got your whole life

program for you. Your father's got this church. He didn't grow up with Irish nuns. Yeah, that's right. Right, right. And he was very hard for me to say this, but let me just say this. Martin King was the most brilliant, vulnerable, sometimes personally irresponsible, brilliant person I'd ever met.

In fact, I let Dr. King know very early on in our relationship, I was not nonviolent. Especially towards him, yeah. No, no, no, no. No, I let him know I'm not nonviolent. I was not committed to nonviolence. And people around him, like Andy Young and people close to him, white man puts his hand on me, he's going down.

Don't you be talking this nonviolent stuff to me. I respect you and I will defend you. As long as you don't expect me to be nonviolent, I will kick your butt in a minute. He says, "Clarence," and he used to say to Dorothy Carton, "We got to make sure that Clarence never is in a situation where he can embarrass us." Never in a situation, because he will embarrass us.

And I believe that most of the time I was with him until the last year of his life, something happened. Something happened to me because I began to look at him and I said, you know, this is me talking to myself. I said, this dude really believes it. He really believes it.

Martin came to say, "Don't you ever talk to-- don't you ever talk to Burke Marshall and talk about Robert? You talk so bad about the Attorney General Clarence. You know, he's just a human being. You guys can't protect me. You can't-- you got to understand." And the way we used to get rid of the tension is that we would do mock funerals. We would do make-believe funerals if one of us got killed, okay? So let's say they would do a make-believe funeral for me, and Martin would say,

Lord, now come on now. We know he doesn't deserve it. I tried all my life to get him to stop drinking all those martinis. Lord. And you know, when he came down south and started drinking Jack Daniels, I couldn't get him to stop. But you know, he was a good man, Lord. Let him in. Let him in, Lord. Let him in. Because he did this and he did that. He would try to externalize what we all believed. The reason I am

I mean, I'm not on welfare. I'm reasonably okay. I'm not on the reason. You'd be more wealthy if you'd stay... No, no, no. What I'm trying to say is that the concept of money and wealth didn't mean anything. And one of the reasons it didn't mean anything because I never believed I would live beyond the age of 50. None of us ever believed. I never believed that Martin would live beyond 50. I just thought that that's just the way it was. And I only changed...

In the last six months, a year with Martin, when I began to say, "This man is not crazy. He really does believe. He really believed that his Lord Jesus Christ, he deeply believed there's nothing I can do, there's nothing Harry Belafonte can do, nothing Tony Schauner can do. He really believed that he was protected by his Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I thought he was crazy, but that's what he believed. And because of the depth of his belief,

It had a profound impact on me because I said, if somebody is so fearless, I ascribe just fearlessness to he was partially crazy. Yeah, because, well, the FBI was after him the whole time. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they turned the IRS on him, everything. Oh, they did everything. Yeah, yeah. They did everything to destroy him. Yeah. And it had a profound effect on him. It had such a profound effect on him.

that I had to go see his personal physician with a fellow by the name of Stanley Levinson. Personal physician. He says, "Clarence, Martin needs to see a psychiatrist and needs to see a doctor. He needs to be hospitalized. He is in such bad shape. He needs to be hospitalized." I said, "Excuse me?" He says, "Yeah, he's in such bad shape. I'm telling you." So I turned to, his name was Arthur Logan. He was his personal physician. And I look at Arthur Logan just like I'm looking at you. I said, "Arthur,

"Martin is not going to be hospitalized." Arthur Logan got very offended. "Clarence, you're a good lawyer, but you know, I'm his medical doctor. I am telling you, if he is not hospitalized, doesn't do anything." I said, "No, it's not gonna happen." He says, "I'm gonna take you to the New York bar." I said, "Don't get where you take me. He's not going. I'm not going to permit, I won't prevent anything possible." So Arthur says, "Well, why are you so adamant on this?" I said, "Let me tell you, Arthur. Let me bring you, you're in the medical world.

Well, let me bring you to the real world I live in. I said, whether it's in 30 days or 60 days or 90 days, but within 30 to 60 days, every conversation that Martin is having with his psychiatrist is being transcribed. And within 60 days, the transcription of his sessions will be on the desk of J. Edgar Hoover. Yeah, definitely. I'm absolutely convinced of that. And I can't take that risk.

And Arthur Logan was so angry at me, he was going to take me to the bar. So I said, I don't give a damn what you're doing. And he was. He was in bad shape and did some stupid, foolish things. And yet, you're not here to hear me. I mean, you are here to talk to this 94-year-old crazy fool. I got that. But you're here because of my relationship to Martin Luther King. If I live a thousand lifetimes, thousand lifetimes,

Nobody was fearless. We were talking about the march from Selma to Montgomery. I never will forget that. March to Selma to Montgomery, and he's speaking. The Capitol is right across the street, and somebody says to him, "Dr. King, how long? How long?" And Dr. King says, "Not long. Not long." Then he goes off, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. How long? Not long.

And he started quoting and quoting and quoting and quoting. If I had to bookend Martin King's life, I would bookend them by two species of documents. One, the letter from the Birmingham jail would be one bookend. And the other would be time to break the silence, the speech opposing the war in Vietnam. Now, in the letter from the Birmingham jail, he was in jail and I go in to see him. And when I go in to see him,

I said, you know, Harry Belafonte and I, I said, we got to raise some bail money. And Martin wouldn't hear it. He says, well, you and Harry have to deal with it. I said, Martin, pay attention to me. We got to raise some bail money because when I come in to see you, I'm running like the gauntlet. Now, I was the only person who could go in to see Martin when he was in jail in Birmingham. And so what I did, and at that time, I'd wear a suit and shirt and tie. I was the only person going to see him. So they didn't pat me down or anything. They just, okay, Attorney General, you should go in to see him.

And what I did, because when I went in to see him, he was responding to a full-page ad that had been taken out in the Birmingham jail. He was really upset about it. And so he wanted to write an answer to that. So I would bring blank sheets of paper under my suit jacket, paper, and I came to see him twice a day. And I did that for a period of five days, from May 20th until five or six days later. That was a letter from the Birmingham jail. I didn't pay any change to the letter.

Six weeks later, I'm in Atlanta, Georgia, sitting outside Martin's office. Martin isn't there, but his secretary, Dora McDonnell, says, Clarence, I'm so glad you're here because the magazine Christianity in Crisis, they want to publish Martin's letter from the Birmingham jail. I said, well, I never saw it. I never read it. So she says, well, we have a bibliographed copy. So I go and I read the copy. And I go and read the bibliographed copy of the letter from the Birmingham jail. And I sit down and I read the letter and I said, oh, my God.

Because I knew the circumstances in which he had written this letter. He didn't have any books. He didn't have anything. So I said to him, I said, listen, Martin, you'll get no credit for being able to quote scripture. You've got a PhD in theology. Most of the school is theology. You're supposed to be able to do that.

But the dude would be quoting Thoreau. The dude would be quoting Engels. The dude would be quoting verbatim. I was there. He didn't have anything to look at. He did this out of his head. And so when I read that letter from the Birmingham jail, I said to myself, that is one smart dude. Okay?

So, as I said, if I had to bookend what he-- I've had to bookend his life. Mm-hmm. One would be to let him in jail, the other would be the time to break the silence. Now, let me just say something here. You don't have to do this. I mean, when I say you, I mean, as Jason Horowitz. Yeah. I'm speaking, that's what I'm saying. I'm not speaking personally. I mean, I am speaking personally. First of all, I got to say something publicly. I don't know what kind of stuff you got going down, brother.

But I don't know what you did. I mean, look at that woman over there. No, no, no, let me just-- no, I thought I had some bad stuff going on all my life. Man, I don't know what kind of stuff you got going on, because damn. Woo wee. He's talking about my wife, Felicia. That's right. I'm just saying. We've been married 35 years. That's what I'm saying.

So, I mean, I'm just saying, I got a long memory. I forget some things, and I don't mean to embarrass you, but I just state what the facts are. You know? As they think, race, it's a local thing. It speaks for itself. I am so touched and honored as I look around and think, now, I know, I see all these people out here. I know Andreessen Horowitz. I mean, you're in the business of making money, right? That's the business. I mean, that's just what you do, right?

I mean, you don't have to-- no, no, no. You-- I don't want to put you on the spot. I know you. I know that's what you do. OK? In fact, Ben, you know what? Maybe I should get my series A. Maybe I should-- you think I'm too old to come? You think I'm too old to qualify? Could I come and work here? Well, I think-- I mean, I don't know that I can qualify, but you know. I mean, man, this is a-- You got to pitch me on an idea. You can't just-- Oh, OK. Oh, that's right. OK. That's tough. That's tough. But in all seriousness--

Race, if so local to the thing, speaks for itself. The thing speaks for itself. Now, I don't know what notices went out about this meeting. I suppose if I got something from Ben Horowitz, I would come. But aside from that, I always assume that people have alternatives. As powerful as Andreessen Horowitz is, you may say,

"Well, I'm busy today. I can't do that." I don't know what notice they sent out. I got Clarence Jones. I don't know. You may say, "Well, I'd like to come, but I'm busy today. I can't do that." But I look around and I see all these people and I said, "Damn, you must have been busy, but you sure came out." And I know you came out of curiosity to see this crazy person, me. But you really came out as a tribute to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and to Andreessen Horowitz. And this is a bad dude here. This is a bad dude.

And by the way, as I'm thinking, as I'm coming over here, you know, I was with the Attorney General. I want to tell you, one Robert Kennedy, the Robert Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy. Senior. Bobby Jr. is a different... Yeah, Robert Kennedy. I had to move fierce. We were always at loggerheads. Always at loggerheads. And then Martin King gets assassinated. It's April 4th, 1968. Robert Kennedy is running for president. And he's in Gary, Indiana. And he gets the word out.

that Martin King has been assassinated, and his handlers are telling him, "You've got to cancel this. You can't go and speak to this all-Black group because they don't know that Martin King's been assassinated. We've got to get you out of here as quickly as possible. You've got to cancel this." Robert Kennedy says, "No, I'm not going to do that." So Robert Kennedy speaks to an all-Black audience in Gary, Indiana, and he says, "Ladies and gentlemen,

Brothers and sisters, I have some very sad news for you. Martin Luther King Jr. has been assassinated. And the crowd is like stunned. And without pausing, he says, I had a member of my family who was also assassinated. We don't have all of the details yet. And he goes on and he starts quoting some things and so beautiful speech. And then a friend of mine who was a treasury agent who was assigned to

to guard Robert Kennedy after he gave that speech, tells me that Robert Kennedy sits down and puts his head in his arms and he sobs. And he says, my God, my God, what is our country coming to? Now, I had been one of the fiercest critics of Robert Kennedy up until that day. And when somebody told me and described to me that he sobbed,

I said, Clarence, there's something about Robert Kennedy you don't know, and you've got to find out more. And that's when I changed my whole opinion about Robert Kennedy. Yeah. We had an interesting conversation about this. I think it's actually very relevant as it relates to Dr. King. So it's interesting. I went to Christopher Columbus Elementary School. And at the time I went,

Columbus was a big hero. Where was that geographically here? Berkeley, California. Oh, Berkeley. Oh, wow. Okay. You know, I mean, he connected two civilizations that had grown up for 10,000 years, never met each other. So it was a big deal. He created the world that we live in now. And then I went to Martin Luther King Jr. High School. Oh, really? Yeah. Yes. But through my lifetime, people stopped viewing Christopher Columbus from

kind of the era he came from and started to judge him from the era that we live in. And at the same time, Martin Luther King became the biggest American hero, really bigger than Abraham Lincoln or George Washington or any of them with the Stevie Wonder song and Reagan made the holiday. It was amazing. And as you said, you've listened to speech. It's like, yeah, obviously he's our biggest hero. Right.

But I noticed something in the last four years. People are starting to look at Dr. King not from his era, but from our era. And so now you have these new movements like the anti-racism movement and so forth. And they're going, well...

Colorblind, okay, but we really have to see color well. Integration, okay, but we're going to have a separate black graduation at Stanford and that kind of thing. So it's kind of like, well, maybe he's not perfect on that. And then the thing that really made me sit down was President Trump was inaugurated on Martin Luther King Day.

It was effusive in his praise. And it was really a lot directed at the New Movement. And so now, sitting here, how do you think about, on the spectrum of Ibram Kendi anti-racism to we shouldn't have affirmative action, like, how would Dr. King think about these things? Or how do you think about these things? Well, diversity, equity, and inclusion. I didn't realize that those words suddenly...

It seemed like it got bad words. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, right. It seemed to be getting a negative connotation. Yes. You know? So I look at the concept of diversity, equity, inclusion in the history of the legacy of Martin King based on one word. Power. P-O-W-E-R. Yeah. Power. Now, I don't know when the challenge of the words that I want my four children to

to be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I don't know how we transition from that simple concept. Very good concept. Yeah. Very good concept. Yeah. The whole books being written on the thesis that, if you go behind some of the books talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion, if you really go and analyze them

very analytically, you come away with the conclusion that no matter how much a society will try, white people are going to be irredeemable. And I don't believe that. I believe just the opposite. I believe that the way you get people talking, thinking comfortably about race is to be comfortable in acknowledging what the historical facts are or were. Nobody in this room

had anything to do with the institution of slavery. None of us. But the institution of slavery had profound consequences going forward in our country. The question is, at what point have we as a society arrived? At what point have we arrived where the institutional consequences of 300 plus or more years

of the institution of slavery is totally irrelevant, has had no going forward consequences on those people who are successors to slave owners and those people who are successors to slaves. When will we arrive at a point when white people sitting out there, you had nothing to do with slavery, that's a fact, and black and brown people sitting out there

You had nothing to do with ancestors who looked like you having formerly been slaves. Power, Frederick Douglass said, concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will. I think it's a meaningless exercise to try to speculate about this projected new society where race is

and the color of your skin is irrelevant. I think that the issue confronting all of us is not that your color is irrelevant. You're goddamn right. Yeah, I'm dark brown, and you see me as dark brown. That is a reality. Someone who is white, I see them as white, and that is reality. But what today, in 2025, what kind of values do we attach to that reality? Automatically.

If a white person wakes up today in America, is that white person presumptively, until proven to the contrary, a racist? There are books. There are books that make that the thesis. I'm a former trial lawyer, so I look at things more pragmatic. We are challenged. This will eat us to death, this issue of diversity, equity, and inclusion. I looked at the television. I mean, does Donald Trump really know

What he's banning when he says diversity, equity, and inclusion? No more diversity, equity, and inclusion in the armed forces. No more diversity, equity, and inclusion. Okay. What is being prohibited? What is being fought against? And those people who are proposing diversity, equity, and inclusion, I challenge you, what are you proposing? Are you not accepting the reality? What year were you in? 2025? Clearly, I think it's fair to say 2025.

with respect to the position of black people in America 2025 is different than it was 30 years ago, 50 years ago. That is a simple historical fact. How much that difference is, I don't know. But we've got to get out of this thing we seem to be trapped in, that somehow DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion is a bad thing. If the people who have the power,

Make a judgment. I think in a workforce, I think if I'm running a company, I'd like to see whether or not there are potential pools of talent in people out there other than those who look like me. Let's just say the audience here is all white. Flip it. The audience here is all black. What is it? What is it about this thing?

that Martin King was so brilliant. I want my four children to be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin. That to me is still, that's the template. That still remains the template. I mean, I read all the books. I mean, I used to, I taught. I'm retired. Six years ago,

I taught in the—I lectured in the law school, I lectured in the graduate school here at Stanford, I lectured in so forth and so forth. This would always come up. And now today, I'm being invited to speak at very distinguished universities, and they want to deal with diversity, equity, and inclusion. And I say, "When you see it, you can believe it. When you see it." When I leave here,

Do I have to write five pages to describe the audience that I see? Do I have to go and say, "Well, I was at this thing on "Grease and Horrors," I saw the--" Do I have to go and write five pages to describe the experience I'm having here and looking at this audience? Do I have to do that? Res ipsa larko, the thing speaks for itself. Unfortunately, as I said, you invent what you have seen and lived and done, experienced,

in your lifetime as a template. Somebody says to you, Ben, Ben Horowitz, how did you get into that? Did you want to get involved in diversity, equity, and inclusion? Did you do that purposely? And by the way, when you met that beautiful woman who is your wife, she's not white, I noticed. You know, she's not white. Oh, no. No, I'm kidding. So, I mean, I'm just saying, people could say, what process brought you? Were you crazy?

As you were talking, I was thinking the part that people don't realize is that judging somebody by the content of their character takes work because you have to understand their character. Hello. And your story about Bobby Sr., where it took you a while to...

in an effort to understand his character before you're okay with it. That's right. It changed me 180 degrees. And I think that that's the thing. You know, we talk about this at the firm a lot. It's an effort, particularly if the person doesn't have your background, isn't from your culture and so forth. And I think that what people don't recognize, look, I'll tell you why we do what we do at the firm, because it makes me a lot of money because I get the best talent. Hello. And that's always why we've done it.

But it's work, but with massive reward. And to me, reading Behind the Dream, the thing that struck me most was the culture of the civil rights movement, be it you, Stanley Levinson, Nelson Rockefeller, Martin Luther King. You guys all judged each other on who you were. And there was no...

need to go, "Oh, you're white, so like you got to work your way." Right. Or, "You're black, so like you're less than me." Or like none of that actually existed. You guys had a common purpose. You were working for a common goal and you took the time to know each other.

And that's the model. And it's so crazy how politicized it still gets and how we always want to be in a race war for whatever reason. I know, for some reason. It's just so bizarre. But I'll just say this. I couldn't be more grateful for you writing it down and sharing it with us. I really felt like I went back and experienced the whole thing. And it's amazing. And it is the model today. And if nobody else does it...

I tell you now, at Andreessen Horowitz, we're doing it. And we want... You're doing it successfully. Yeah, we want our firm and our community to be like your community was, because it's amazing. Wow. Wow. I don't know that I can ever... Did you hear what he just said? Damn. Y'all got to monetize that, man. You know, he...

Well, that's where we're monetizing. Incredible. So I said, thank you all so much. And please join me in thanking the amazing Dr. Kahn.

All right, that is all for today. If you did make it this far, first of all, thank you. We put a lot of thought into each of these episodes, whether it's guests, the calendar Tetris, the cycles with our amazing editor, Tommy, until the music is just right. So if you'd like what we put together, consider dropping us a line at ratethispodcast.com slash A16Z. And let us know what your favorite episode is. It'll make my day, and I'm sure Tommy's too. We'll catch you on the flip side.