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Historical Biography

Attorney General: William Ramsey Clark

Clark, William Ramsey
66th Attorney General, -
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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. He died April 9, 2021.

About the Artist: Robert Berks

(1922-2011)

Robert Berks was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1922. He studied at the Boston Museum of Fine Art and was also a pupil of Hyman Bloom. Berks is primarily a sculptor and has modeled busts of many famous Americans including President Lyndon B. Johnson, General William C. Westmoreland, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A Berks bust of President John F. Kennedy stands in the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D. C., and his bust of Robert F. Kennedy is in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice. Berks' portrait of Attorney General Ramsey Clark was painted in 1973.

Updated October 25, 2022