30 Facts About Ramsey Clark

William Ramsey Clark was an American lawyer, activist, and federal government official.

Ramsey Clark supervised the drafting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Civil Rights Act of 1968.

Ramsey Clark was the last surviving Cabinet member of the Lyndon B Johnson administration.

Ramsey Clark attended Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, DC, but dropped out at the age of 17 in order to join the United States Marine Corps, seeing action in Western Europe in the final months of World War II; he served until 1946.

Ramsey Clark was admitted to the Texas bar in 1950, and was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1956.

Ramsey Clark was one of Johnson's popular and successful cabinet appointments, being described as "able, independent, liberal and soft-spoken" and a symbol of the New Frontier liberals; he had built a successful record, especially in his management of the Justice Department's Lands Division; he had increased the efficiency of his division and had saved enough money from his budget so that he had asked Congress to reduce the budget by $200,000 annually.

The elder Ramsey Clark assumed senior status on June 12,1967, effectively resigning from the Supreme Court and creating the vacancy Johnson apparently desired.

Ramsey Clark served as the attorney general until Johnson's term as president ended on January 20,1969.

Ramsey Clark was active in the anti-Vietnam War movement and visited North Vietnam in 1972 as a protest against the bombing of Hanoi.

On January 28,1970, Ramsey Clark testified in the Chicago Seven trial.

Ramsey Clark was barred by Judge Julius Hoffman from testifying before the jury after Clark had testified outside the presence of the jury.

At the 1972 Democratic National Convention, Ramsey Clark received one delegate vote for the presidential nomination and two delegate votes for the vice-presidential nomination.

In 1974, Ramsey Clark ran as the Democratic candidate for US Senator from New York; he defeated the party's designee Lee Alexander in the primary, but lost in the general election to the incumbent Jacob Javits.

Similarly, after the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Ramsey Clark charged and "tried" NATO on 19 counts and issued calls for its dissolution.

In September 1998, Ramsey Clark led a delegation to Sudan to collect evidence in the aftermath of President Bill Clinton's bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum the previous month as part of Operation Infinite Reach.

In 2004, Ramsey Clark joined a panel of about 20 Arab and one other non-Arab lawyers to defend Saddam Hussein in his trial before the Iraqi Special Tribunal.

Christopher Hitchens said Ramsey Clark was admitting Hussein's guilt when Ramsey Clark reportedly stated in a 2005 BBC interview: "He [Saddam] had this huge war going on, and you have to act firmly when you have an assassination attempt".

Ramsey Clark was not alone in criticizing the Iraqi Special Tribunal's trial of Saddam Hussein, which drew intense criticism from international human rights organizations.

One of the aforementioned outbursts occurred when Ramsey Clark was ejected from the trial after passing the judge a memorandum stating that the trial was making "a mockery of justice".

On March 18,2006, Ramsey Clark attended the funeral of Slobodan Milosevic.

On September 1,2007, in New York City, Ramsey Clark called for detained Filipino Jose Maria Sison's release and pledged assistance by joining the latter's legal defense team headed by Jan Fermon.

Ramsey Clark doubted Dutch authorities' "validity and competency", since the murder charges originated in the Philippines and had already been dismissed by the country's Supreme Court.

In November 2007, Ramsey Clark visited Nandigram in India where conflict between state government forces and villagers resulted in the death of at least 14 villagers.

In September 2010, an essay on torture by Ramsey Clark was published in a three-part paperback entitled The Torturer in the Mirror.

Ramsey Clark was a recipient of the 1992 Gandhi Peace Award, and the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award for his commitment to civil rights, his opposition to war and military spending and his dedication to providing legal representation to the peace movement, particularly, his efforts to free Leonard Peltier.

In 2002, Clark founded "VoteToImpeach", an organization advocating the impeachment of President George W Bush and several members of his administration.

Ramsey Clark was the founder of the International Action Center, which holds significant overlapping membership with the Workers' World Party.

Ramsey Clark married Georgia Welch, a classmate from the University of Texas, on April 16,1949.

Ramsey Clark's wife died on July 3,2010, at the age of 81.

Ramsey Clark died at age 93 at his home in Greenwich Village in New York City on April 9,2021.