Who is sherriff clarke?

[silverfish]

In ‘National brotherhood week’, by Tom Lehrer there a line:
‘Lena Horne and Sheriff Clarke are dancing cheek to cheek’

I just want to know who sheriff Clarke is. Google doesn’t really help, as it either seems to find either tom lehrer stuff, or stuff about presumedly unrelated people called Sheriff Clarke.

[silenus]

Sheriff Clarke was the sheriff of Selma, Alabama, and had several run-ins with Rev. King and the civil right movement.

[chukhung]

@silverfish

In ‘National brotherhood week’, by Tom Lehrer there a line:
‘Lena Horne and Sheriff Clarke are dancing cheek to cheek’

I just want to know who sheriff Clarke is.

I’m just guessing that this a reference to Jim Clark, the sheriff of Dallas County, Alabama, who made himself notorious for his actions against civil rights protesters in Selma, Alabama in the 1960s. More information is on this page .

When SNCC organized a “Freedom Day” on October 7, 1963, a local photographer, under orders from Sheriff Jim Clark, took pictures of the 250 blacks who lined up to register and asked them what their employers would think of the pictures. Police beat SNCC workers who tried to bring food and water to those in line.
…
At one SCLC protest, he [Sheriff Clark] arrested Amelia Boynton, who was well-respected in the community. Pictures of the arrest, during which the club-wielding Clark pushed Boynton to the ground, ran in the New York Times and the Washington Post. Ralph Abernathy of the SCLC mockingly nominated Clark for honorary membership in the Dallas County Voters’ League “for publicity services rendered.”
…
Students, inspired by their teachers and by the arrest of [Martin Luther] King on February 1, began to protest as well. When a group of about 200 teenagers refused to move from the courthouse on February 10, Sheriff Clark led them on a “forced march” that left some vomiting from exhaustion.

Personally, I think it would take a lot more than “National Brotherhood Week” to get me cheek-to-cheek with that specimen…

[silverfish]

Thanks people. Thanks in particular to chukhung for the link, but just having a full name, and place to search for will help quite a bit too.

[Kent_Clark]

Fire hoses and police dogs. Not one of the banner days for American law enforcement.

[chukhung]

@kunilou

Fire hoses and police dogs. Not one of the banner days for American law enforcement.

Are you sure you’re thinking of Sheriff Jim Clark of Selma?

By far the most famous use of “fire hoses and police dogs” in that era was by public safety commissioner T. Eugene “Bull” Connor in Birmingham, Alabama. See this page

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., who described Birmingham as “the most segregated city in America,” organized the demonstrations with the help of local civil rights leader Fred L. Shuttlesworth and others. “Bull” Connor tried to stop the growing demonstrations, and gained lasting infamy when he resorted to using the water hoses and dogs. Televised reports of police dogs lunging at African-American citizens and people being washed down the streets by water from powerful fire hoses dramatized the plight of African-Americans in segregated areas.

I guess it wouldn’t surprise me if Clark resorted to the same tactics as Connor, but I haven’t found an article about Selma that directly says he did so.

On this page it says

Back then, the police unleashed a fierce attack with clubs, bullwhips, cattle prods and tear gas, blocking the voting-rights marchers from crossing Edmund Pettus Bridge.
…
“I’m thinking about all the tear gas and the horses,” said Frank Spivey, 53, who was toward the back of the march in 1965. “The wind was blowing and the tear gas burned our eyes. All you could do was run.”

It almost seems like dogs and fire hoses were the only things that Clark didn’t use.

[pkbites]

Here in Milwaukee the county Sheriff is David Clarke…but he’s black, and that’s probably not who Lehrer was talking about.

But (as long as I have your attention) he’s the best Sheriff we’ve had here in a long, long, lonnnnnng time. Though he did run for Mayor (I voted for him. He still lost), the guy is actually more of a lawman than a politician (rare in sheriffs around here).