Jim Clark (sheriff) - Sheriff of Selma

Sheriff of Selma

In 1964 and 1965, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee engaged in a voters drive in Dallas County, of which Selma is the seat. Clark was sheriff of Selma, and vocally opposed to racial integration, wearing a button reading "Never" (integrate). Clark wore military style clothing, and carried a cattle prod in addition to his pistol and club.

In response to the voters drive, Clark recruited a horse mounted posse of Ku Klux Klan members and supporters. Together with the Highway Patrolmen of Albert J. Lingo, the posse was intended to "operate ... as a mobile anti-civil rights force", and appeared at several Alabama towns outside of Clark's jurisdiction to assault and threaten civil rights workers.

In Selma, the SNCC campaign was met with violence and intimidation by Clark, who waited at the entrance to the county courthouse, beating and arresting registrants at the slightest provocation. At one point, Clark mass arrested around 300 students who were holding a silent protest outside the courthouse, force marching them with cattle prods to a detention centre three miles away. By 1965, only 300 of the city's 15,000 potential black voters were registered.

These actions led to a widespread comparison of Clark to Eugene "Bull" Connor, and to James Baldwin saying of Clark,

I suggest that what has happened to the white Southerner is in some ways much worse than what has happened to the Negroes there ... One has to assume that he is a man like me, but he does not know what drives him to use the club, to menace with a gun, and to use a cattle prod against a woman's breasts ... Their moral lives have been destroyed by a plague called color.