Clark, Ramsey (1927–)

Ramsey William Clark was born in Texas, the son of Tom C. Clark, attorney general under President Harry Truman and later an associate Supreme Court Justice. Ramsey followed his father into the law, graduating from University of Chicago law school before moving briefly into private practice on his way to the U.S. Justice Department during the early days of the Kennedy administration. Clark would emerge as one of the Justice Department's more radical lawyers, often at odds with prevailing opinions on civil rights law enforcement. During the dark and dangerous days of the early 1960s, when civil rights campaigners literally took their lives in their hands in challenging the Jim Crow laws of the South, Ramsey Clark, as assistant attorney general in the lands division from 1961 to 1965, was one of the few senior department figures to advocate a more active role for the Justice Department in protecting civil rights activists.

With the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the Justice Department of President Lyndon Johnson became much more active in the field of civil rights. Yet, the Justice Department found itself struggling to understand and deal with the massive waves of civil unrest that convulsed the nation throughout much of the decade, as frustration grew at the perceived slow pace and limited scope of change, and against the Vietnam War. Clark was thrust further into this environment as he became deputy attorney general in 1965, acting attorney general in October 1966, and finally attorney general in March 1967.

Clark won both acclaim and condemnation for his work as attorney general largely as a result of his delicate balancing act in weighing the interests of the State against individual rights to privacy and protest. Indeed, Richard Nixon would make him a central issue during the 1968 presidential campaign, promising that among the first things the nation would get would be a new attorney general. In addressing civil unrest, Clark implemented the Community Relations Service and the Office of Law Enforcement Assistance Administration programs. Through them, Justice began placing increasing emphasis on riot prevention capabilities and the fostering of effective police-community relations. He also sought to defend the right to privacy by denying wiretaps requested under a dubious catchall provision of the 1968 Omnibus Crime and Safe Streets Act. At the same time, though, he prosecuted a huge number of draft evasion cases—more than 1,500 in 1968 alone—including Dr. Benjamin Spock, for conspiracy to encourage draft evasion.

Unfortunately for Clark, his balancing act came crashing down when he created the Interdivisional Information Unit to collate, store, and disseminate data on the composition and motivations of “dissident groups”—with a view to using this information to prevent civil unrest rather than merely reacting to it. Though he did not know it, by using the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as the chief source of these data without providing a framework within which it should operate in this role, Clark helped to pave the way for information to be used to target groups like the Black Panthers and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for repressive action, as part of the FBI's COINTELPRO operations, that grossly violated their civil liberties.

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