526902
Tom C. Clark
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Tom Campbell Clark, 1899-1977. Attorney General, 1945-1949; Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court, 1949-1967. Mint condition cacheted first day cover signed, Tom C. Clark.
This beautiful first day cover commemorates the 175th anniversary of the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1791. The cachet depicts the United States Capitol with the first page of the United States Constitution, beginning “We The People,” rising behind it. The postal cancellation is dated July 1, 1966, which was during Clark’s tenure on the Supreme Court.
Clark, a Texan, left private law practice to join the Justice Department in 1937. He was the civilian coordinator for the forced relocation of Japanese-Americans during the early stages of World War II, and later he headed the Justice Department’s anti-trust and criminal divisions. President Harry S. Truman appointed him Attorney General in 1945, a post that he held for just over four years before Truman appointed him to the Supreme Court in August 1949.
Truman said that Clark’s appointment was his biggest mistake as President. In an interview with author Merle Miller that eventually became Plain Speaking, the aging Truman called Clark a “damned fool” who, he said, had not “made one right decision that I can think of.” In Truman’s eyes, Clark was not “a bad man. It’s just that he’s such a dumb son of a bitch.”
Like Truman, Clark was anti-Communist and took a stance against Communism during the Red Scare of the 1950’s. But overall Clark was more conservative than Truman would have liked. And—this is key—he raised Truman’s ire by voting in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer to hold unconstitutional Truman’s attempt to seize the steel mills to avert a strike and prevent disruption of needed steel production at the height of the Korean War.
While Clark’s career on the Supreme Court was not particularly noteworthy, Clark nonetheless provided key votes in decisions expanding the scope of individual rights. For example, he joined the unanimous Court in striking down racial segregation in schools in Brown v. Board of Education. He also wrote the Court’s opinion in Mapp v. Ohio, which applied to the states the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule barring admission of illegally seized evidence in a criminal prosecution, and in three 1964 cases that upheld the public accommodations provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, Hamm v. City of Rock Hill, and Katzenbach v. McClung.
Clark resigned from the Supreme Court in 1967 to avoid a conflict of interest when President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed his son, Ramsey Clark, Attorney General. Clark said that swearing in his son was his most “momentous” moment on the Court. After his resignation, Clark sat as a visiting justice in the United States Courts of Appeals and served as director of the Federal Judicial Center and as chair of the Board of Directors of the American Judicature Society.
This cover is in mint condition. Clark has signed it in black felt-tipped pen.
Unframed. Please ask us about custom framing this piece.
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