James Gardner Clark, Jr. (September 17, 1922, Elba, Coffee County, Alabama - June 4, 2007) of Selma, Alabama, was the sheriff of Dallas County, Alabama from 1955 to 1966. He was one of the officials responsible for the violent arrests of civil rights protestors during the Selma to Montgomery marches.

Clark served with the U.S. Army Air Force in the Aleutian Islands during World War II. He was a cattle rancher when lifelong friend Governor of Alabama Jim Folsom appointed him as sheriff in 1955.

As of 1965, only 300 of the city's 15,000 potential black voters were registered. As civil rights organizers pressed the local black community to register, Clark and his deputies arrested hundreds of activists.

His officers joined with Alabama state troops in attacking civil rights protestors on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in an event known as Bloody Sunday which was a critical event in the United States Congress passing the Voting Rights Act.

In an obituary, the Washington Post noted:

Mr. Clark's most visible moment came March 7, 1965, at the start of a peaceful voting rights march from Selma to the capital city of Montgomery.

Mr. Clark and his men were stationed near Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge. Alabama State Trooper John Cloud ordered the hundreds of marchers to disperse. When they did not, Mr. Clark commanded his mounted "posse" to charge into the crowd. Tear gas heightened the chaos, and protesters were beaten....

Captured on national television, the Bloody Sunday incident spurred widespread revulsion. Even Gov. George C. Wallace, who had earlier sparked a national showdown over a refusal to integrate public schools, reprimanded the state troopers and Mr. Clark.

Clark manhandled activists such as Amelia Boynton Robinson, Rev. F.D. Reese and Rev. C.T. Vivian in front of news cameras gaining international coverage.

Selma was chosen by civil rights activists for protests because they believed that the volatile, short-tempered Clark would overreact.

According to Wilson Baker, director of public safety, when Clark heard this on a surveillance tape made of the meeting, "He'd scream bloody murder that he'd never do it again, he wouldn't fall into that trap again and go out the next day and do the same thing".

The Mayor of Selma Joseph Smitherman and Wilson Baker wanted to blunt the force of the campaign by exercising restraint but the voter registration offices were Clark's responsibility. Following the passage of the Voter Registration Act, Wilson Baker defeated Clark in a 1966 election, in part because so many blacks had registered to vote.

Following his defeat, Clark sold mobile homes and, during a period of financial hardship, served nine months in prison for conspiracy to import marijuana. In 2006, he told the Montgomery Advertiser, "Basically, I’d do the same thing today if I had to do it all over again." He died in Elba, Alabama in June 2007 from a stroke and heart conditions.

Popular culture

He was satirized by Tom Lehrer in the song National Brotherhood Week in the line, "National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood week, Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek." Lena Horne is the singer and actress who was active in the Civil Rights movement at the time.

References

1. AP via MSNBC "Sheriff Jim Clark, segregationist icon, dies at 84" June 6, 2007
2. AP via San Francisco Chronicle, "Ala. Ex-Sheriff Dies; Civil Rights Foe" June 6, 2007
3. Washington University in St Louis, Sheriff Jim Clark
4. Steven Kasher, The Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History, 1954-68 (New York: Abbeville Press, 1996)
5. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/us/07clark.html?ref=obituaries "Jim Clark, Sheriff Who Enforced Segregation, Dies at 84"
6. Websters Online Dictionary

External links

• History of the Selma actions
• [281567]Obituary of Jim Clark