Tom C. Clark

Thomas Campbell Clark lived from September 23, 1899 to June 13, 1977 and was an American lawyer who served as the fifty ninth United States Attorney General from 1945 to 1949 and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1949 to 1967. Born in Dallas, Texas, he graduated from the University of Texas School of Law after serving in World War I, practiced law in Dallas until 1937 when he joined the Justice Department, and became Attorney General after Harry S. Truman became president in 1945. In 1949 Truman nominated Clark to the Supreme Court vacancy caused by the death of Frank Murphy, making him the first, and long remaining the only, Supreme Court justice from Texas. He retired from the Court to allow his son, Ramsey Clark, to become United States Attorney General, and was succeeded by the first African American justice, Thurgood Marshall, in 1967. Clark served on the Vinson and Warren Courts, voted with the majority in Brown v. Board of Education, and wrote the majority opinions in Mapp v. Ohio, extending the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule to the states, Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, upholding the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Abington School District v. Schempp, which found mandatory Bible reading in public schools unconstitutional.