William Ramsey Clark

Ramsey Clark, who championed civil rights and liberties as attorney general in the Johnson administration, then devoted much of the rest of his life to defending unpopular causes and infamous people, including Saddam Hussein and others accused of war crimes, died on Friday April 9 2021 at his home in Manhattan. He was 93. William Ramsey Clark , the son of Tom C. Clark, the Fifty-Ninth Attorney General, was born in Dallas, Texas, on December 18, 1927. He served in the United States Marine Corps in 1945 and 1946, and then earned a B.A. degree from the University of Texas in 1949, a M.A. and a J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1950. He was admitted to the Texas bar in 1951, and to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1956. He was admitted to the D.C. bar in 1969 and the New York bar in 1970. From 1951 to 1961 Clark was an associate and partner in the law firm of Clark, Reed, and Clark. He served in the Department of Justice as Assistant Attorney General of the Lands Division from 1961 to 1965, and as Deputy Attorney General from 1965 to 1967. Clark was director of the American Judicature Society in 1963. From 1964 to 1965 he was national president of the Federal Bar Association. On March 2, 1967, President Johnson appointed him Attorney General of the United States. He served in that capacity until January 20, 1969. In 1949, he married Georgia Welch, a classmate at Texas. (She also earned a master’s, in political science, at Chicago.) They had two children, Ronda Kathleen Clark and Thomas Campbell Clark I. Mrs. Clark died in 2010. Their son died in 2014. His daughter survives him, as do a sister, Mimi Gronlund, and three granddaughters.