Jim Clark (sheriff)

Jim Clark was born in Alabama, the son of Ettie Lee and James Gardner Clark. He served with the U.S. Army Air Force in the Aleutian Islands during World War II. Clark was a cattle rancher when his lifelong friend, Alabama Governor Jim Folsom, appointed him as sheriff in 1955. He married and later divorced Louise Clark, with whom he had five children, Jimmy Clark, Jeff Clark, Johnny Clark, Joanna Clark Miller and Jan Clark Buster. ==Dallas County Sheriff (1955–1966)==

In 1964 and 1965, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) engaged in a voting drive in Dallas County, of which Selma was the county seat. As sheriff of Dallas County, Clark vocally opposed racial integration, wearing a button reading "Never" [integrate]. He wore military style clothing and carried a cattle prod in addition to his pistol and club. Together with the highway patrolmen of Albert J. Lingo, the posse was intended to "operate ... as a mobile anti-civil rights force", and appeared at several Alabama towns outside of Clark's jurisdiction to assault and threaten civil rights workers. At one point, Clark arrested around 300 students who were holding a silent protest outside the courthouse, force-marching them with cattle prods to a detention center three miles away. By 1965, only 300 of the city's 15,000 potential black voters were registered. After The New York Times and The Washington Post published photos of an SCLC protest at which Clark wielded a club and pushed Amelia Boynton to the ground, Ralph Abernathy nominated him for honorary membership in the Dallas County Voters League, a local voting rights organization, for "publicity services rendered". ==Bloody Sunday==

On February 18, 1965, in Marion, Alabama, a peaceful protest march was met by Alabama state patrolmen, who beat the protesters after street lights suddenly went out. A young protester, Jimmie Lee Jackson, attempted to protect his mother and octogenarian grandfather from police beating, and was shot in the stomach by Corporal James Bonard Fowler of the highway patrol. 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. == Views on Martin Luther King, Jr. ==

On July 22, 1965, the Texarkana, Texas local branch of the Citizen's Council, a white supremacist organization, sponsored Clark's appearance as a guest at their meeting. During Clark's talk to the group, he recalled of Bloody Sunday, "they sent the so-called preachers." He went on to say of Martin Luther King Jr., "we decided to treat him like the common yellow cur dog that he is." ==Loss of sheriff's office==

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. In the 1966 election, following the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Wilson Baker defeated Clark's write-in campaign, in part because the Act allowed many African-Americans to register to vote and cast ballots against Clark. Clark attempted to have suppressed 1,600 ballots cast for his opponent due to "irregularities", but court orders placed the votes back on record. ==Later life and death==

Following his defeat, Clark sold mobile homes. In 1978, a federal grand jury in Montgomery indicted Clark on charges of conspiring to smuggle three tons of marijuana from Colombia. Clark was sentenced to two years in prison and ended up serving nine months. == References ==