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Remembering Attorney Ramsey Clark
Our friend and colleague Attorney Ramsey Clark died in his home in Greenwich Village from complications from a fall last Friday, April 9, 2021. He was 93 years old. He came from a prominent New Deal Texas family. His father Tom Clark had been the Attorney General of United States and then served on the Supreme Court. The Clark family and the Lyndon Johnson family were friends and political allies.
Lyndon Johnson appointed Ramsey Clark to be the US Attorney General. He served in that position for 18 months severely disappointing Johnson who remarked that he thought he was appointing Tom Clark’s son. “I was wrong.“ said Johnson. Clark opposed the death penalty and declared a moratorium on it when he was in office. He opposed wire tapping.
He supported the civil rights movement and helped draft the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He was a key person empowering federal desegregation orders. At a cabinet meeting he declared his opposition to the war in Vietnam. That was the last cabinet meeting, he told us, that Johnson ever invited him to.
He also disappointed and baffled many on the left when he took up representation of such figures as Shaikh Abdul Rahman, Milosevich and Saddam Hussein. Clark said they deserved competent counsel.
- Documentary Film – Citizen Clark: A LIfe Of Principle
- Gloria La Riva: An Attorney Who Turned Against Imperialism
- Abdeen Jabara Interview With Randy Credico
Guest – Attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, with the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, that is partnering with the newly-formed Center for Protest Law and Litigation, to demand a fully public investigation into law enforcement’s handling of the riot on the Capitol Building on that day that shocked much of the nation.
Guest – Attorney Alan Levine, a law partner of Ramsey Clark’s for five years in the firm Clark, Wulf, and Levine. He worked as an attorney with the New York civil Liberties Union and the Puerto Rican Defense Fund.
Guest – Ralph Nader, one of the nation’s most effective and well-known social critics. He has raised public awareness and increased government and corporate accountability. As a young lawyer in 1965 he made headlines with his book Unsafe at Any Speed, leading to congressional hearings and passage of a series of life-saving auto safety laws in 1966. His example has inspired a generation of consumer advocates, citizen activists and public interest attorneys. Full biography.
Past interviews with Attorney Ramsey Clark
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