Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,147

This is the grave of Joseph Sill Clark.

Born in 1901 in Philadelphia, Clark grew up wealthy. His father was a prominent and lawyer and tennis player who won the 1885 U.S. National Championship in Doubles. Clark went to fancy schools, first in Pennsylvania and then Massachusetts, before going to Harvard, where he graduated in 1923. He had a fun western adventure working a dude ranch he partly owned in Wyoming before going to law school at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1926 and then passed the bar.

The Clarks were Progressives and for quite a few of these folks, as the Republican was well back into revanchism in the 1920s, this was leading to a big swallow of pride and then a switch to the Democrats. That is what Clark did in 1928, when he supported Al Smith’s presidential run. Clark then became a Democratic activist in the city, seeking to destroy the Republican machine that ran Philadelphia. He formed something called the Democratic Warriors Club, which is a concept it would be nice if Democrats took up today instead of some good ol’ comity. Anyway, Clark couldn’t actually win as a Democrat at this time, but he ran for city council and managed his friends losing race. Even in the New Deal, Philadelphia was dominated by the Republicans. But Clark had the law and his family money, so he wasn’t exactly struggling financially either.

World War II arrived and Clark enlisted in the Army Air Force in August 1941 to prep for it. He was commissioned as a captain and named to head the AAF Organizational Planning Headquarters in Washington. He then became deputy chief of staff for General George Stratemeyer in the China Burma India Theater. He and Stratemeyer became close, Clark rose to colonel, he won lots of medals, and worked with the general after the war for awhile as well based in Washington.

In 1946, Clark went back to Philadelphia to continue his long quest to make it a Democratic town. He and his friends continued to lose. But times were starting to change. He was a really important guy for someone who had never won a race, including chairing Harry Truman’s citizens committee of volunteers and running the Philadelphia chapter of Americans for Democratic Action. In 1949, Clark managed to break through. He won the job of city controller while his political partner Richardson Dilworth won city treasurer. They went after the corruption of the Republican machine, had lots of officials arrested or fired, and did a lot to clean up a notoriously filthy city. Also, for all that machine politics were usually connected with Democrats in the public mind because of Tammany, it could really be either party.

Clark then ran for mayor in 1951, used a broom as his campaign symbol to remind voters of his pledges to clean up the city, and became the first Democrat to win election as mayor of Philadelphia since 1884. He was very active. The city government was totally revamped, many more black Philadelphians were hired into city jobs, merit won the day over patronage, taxes went up and so did big public housing projects and plans for major mass transit improvements. From the beginning, he pledged to run only one term. Unlike most of these people who lie their way into office that way, he never considered a second term.

Of course, one reason for that is that Clark had his eyes on the Senate. He ran in 1956. Most of the Philadelphia Democratic establishment didn’t like him at this point. He was really quite liberal and he was serious about good government, neither of which served their interests. He ran as a liberal too. He wanted to repeal Taft-Hartley, increase the minimum wage, expand Social Security. He slammed Eisenhower as a right-winger. Yet he managed to win by a hair, even as Ike carried the state again easily. He would win reelection in 1962 in another very tight race. Nothing about those tight races suggested to Clark to moderate his positions. He andLBJ did not get along because Clark wanted more on civil rights when Johnson was Majority Leader. He hated the filibuster and called for its elimination. He wrote a book in 1963 called The Senate Establishment and another in 1964 called Congress: The Sapless Branch about how horrible it all really was in Washington.

Clark did vote for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, but almost immediately regretted it and by 1965 had joined Wayne Morse and a few other senators in lambasting the horrors of what the U.S. was beginning to do in Vietnam. Clark abhorred the southern Dixiecrats who dominated his party and thus the Senate since they all served for their entire lives and controlled the body through the seniority system. They hated him in return.

In 1968, Pennsylvania turned against Clark for a third term. He ran against Richard Schweiker and the congressman defeated him. There were a number of issues. Clark’s strong support for civil rights alienated the white ethnics of Philadelphia who had voted for him in the past. He also was a very big advocate for limiting access to guns. Supposedly, this angered sportsmen. I believe it, but of course no one was really arguing that some yahoo out in Clarion County couldn’t go deer hunting there. But in this extremely violent nation that is the United States, such arguments are always connected with race and Americans’ revanchist ideas of property and gender. Incidentally, Clark’s campaign manager in 1968 was the author James Michener, who had a much more active political career than I realized in between writing his very popular books. Schweiker defeated him 52-46, so it wasn’t even that close.

Unsurprisingly, Clark and Frank Rizzo truly loathed each other and Clark tried to defeat the mayor in 1971, first through supporting one candidate in the primary and then through supporting the Republican in the general. Anyone who hates Frank Rizzo that much sounds pretty good to me. He spent some of his retirement teaching government at Temple, which I also respect because it wasn’t Penn or Princeton or Harvard. He also was a big promoter of international cooperation and in 1969, he started to head a group called World Federalists USA, which supported a one-world government of the type that made far-right heads explode.

Clark really was one of the very rare super rich people who was decent in politics. I can’t say that very often. Let’s face it, he needed nothing from party bosses. This is the one thing that being super rich can do in politics that is almost always negative but actually can be positive. So he always maintained his independence. He died in 1990, at the age of 88.

In Lamar Alexander’s memoir (now there’s a compelling read!), he tells a story about how Howard Baker asked Margaret Chase Smith how she was going to vote for a bill and she told him that she always votes against Joseph Clark no matter what. That was his opinion on how to vote in relation to Elizabeth Warren.

Joseph Sill Clark is buried in Saint Thomas Episcopal Church Cemetery, Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania.

If you would like this series to visit other people elected in the 1956 Senate races, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Bourke Hickenlooper is in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Thomas Kuchel is buried in Anaheim, California. In case you are wondering, who the hell are those guys, who in 70 years will remember that Gary Peters or, for that matter, John Hickenlooper existed? Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.