Thomas D. Clark

University of Mississippi

Clark had decided that farming, manual labor and river work were not going to meet his needs. At the urging of his parents, he entered the University of Mississippi in September 1925. While there, he met his first mentor, historian Charles S. Sydnor, who held a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Even though Clark had but one class under Sydnor, British history, which wasn't even within his interests, the two had "deep conversations" about the rich heritage of the old South. Sydnor encouraged Clark to follow his interests into post graduate studies in the field of History.

It was at Ole Miss that Clark discovered the significance of his birthday and understood for the first time what Bastille Day was about. Clark "fell in love with learning" at that time, improved his use of the English language and began to develop writing and study habits that framed the disciplines through which he was to accomplish great things later in his life.

Clark had financed his education at Ole Miss with a cotton crop on land his father had given him but before he graduated the funds had all but run out. He then found a golf course that needed tending and took the job. It turned out that budding writer, William Faulkner, also having a hard time with finances, helped Clark tend the golf course. Clark was later quite surprised to see that Faulkner had "hit the bigtime" with his writing. He graduated with honors earning a BA in 1928.

University of Kentucky

Clark, through his new-found interest in history, began attending meetings of the American Historical Association (AHA). It was there that Clark claims to have been exposed to the profession of the historian through two major personalities he saw at the AHA meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana (December 1928):

Ulrich Phillips - with Slavery: The Central Theme of Southern History

James Breasted - with The New Crusade,

Upon hearing the presentations Clark recalls, " I came home thoroughly convinced I wanted to be a historian."

Receiving scholarships to both the University of Cincinnati and to the University of Kentucky, he chose the latter.

Clark went on to receive his master's degree in history but when he would go further, the financial dilemma struck again. At the last minute, he was offered a fellowship at Duke.

Duke University

Hamilton: You took a doctorate at Duke. I understand your initial train ride to Durham was an eventful one?

Clark: Yes, a historic moment. I took the old southern train from Meridian, Mississippi. Rode it up to Atlanta and Spartanburg and up to Gastonia. And there was a tremendous mob of people around the station [at Gastonia]. The train was stopped. We sat, as I recall, almost an hour. That was the strike. That was the beginning of the breaking of the old feudal system of textile labor relations. That was an historic moment in the South. And I was there. Right in the middle of it without knowing what it was all about.

That December the AHA met in Durham and I went. Duke used its graduate students as guides and so forth. I took E. Merton Coulter of Georgia, John Oliver of Pittsburg, and Professor Lynch of Indiana out to see the new campus rising out of the ground and they became lifelong friends of mine. I heard James Harvey Robinson deliver his presidential address ["The Newer Ways of Historians," American Historical Association 35 (January 1930)]. I came up close to the Association... [for] the second time, which had an impact on me.

At Duke, Clark centered his research on the American frontier, the development of Midwestern railroads, and slavery issues of the South. While there, he met Martha Elizabeth Turner who was to become his wife of 62 years and mother of his two children. He completed his doctorate in history in 1931. From there, it was back to the University of Kentucky, where he was to teach history by day and develop library resources by night.

Professorship at UK

Clark became a professor at the University of Kentucky in 1931. With few resources at his disposal, he almost single-handedly built Kentucky's history department into a major doctoral program in southern history. At one point its star-studded faculty included Albert D. Kirwan, Clement Eaton, James F. Hopkins, Holman Hamilton, Steven A. Channing, and Charles P. Roland. Clark began a 70-year-long enterprise at cataloging, organizing, rescuing, and preserving Kentucky's history. He established at UK a culture of respect for the heritage and documentation of the past. He re-organized the History department, bringing revolutionary innovations to the way the subject was researched and taught. His comprehensive methods were inclusive and exhaustive in scope and detail yet presented to his students in a logical and eloquent manner.

Upon receiving news that irreplaceable historical documents were being abused and defaced in Frankfort, Dr Clark rushed to the scene from Lexington. There he found that pages of military records of Kentuckians involved in the Battle of 1812, the Mexican war and the Civil War were being used as temporary sleeping cots and pipe lighters. He appealed to the newly elected Gov. A.B. "Happy" Chandler to have the documents moved to the Lexington campus. If not for this intervention, vast portions of Kentucky's History would have been missing from the Archives that are preserved to this day. Clark's subsequent appeals to the Legislature and the Governors led to the eventual establishment of the Kentucky Archives Commission in 1957.

Dr Thomas Clark became head of the history department in 1941 and a distinguished professor in 1950. His good-natured, down-to-earth style and gentle charm made him a favorite among students and fellow faculty which made it possible for him to recruit the vast amount of help needed to build and maintain the growing Kentucky archives. He labored to lead the effort toward completion and retained the workforce even after his retirement as department head in 1965 and his final retirement as professor in 1968.

Clark served on the Kentucky State Archives and Records Commission from 1958 until his death. He wrote on matters of timber and natural resource conservation, fiscal responsibility, constitutional and education reform, and human rights. He was praised by Rep. Steve Nunn in the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center's release of 14 November 2001, for his vision and for "always seeking to advance the common good." He taught at various universities including Harvard, Duke, and Stanford, as well as lecturing at the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies in Austria. He was also invited to lecture on behalf of the State Department at Oxford University, and in Greece, India and Yugoslavia.

Clark fought to preserve cultural heritage for the benefit of future generations and to promote public awareness and appreciation of the same in his own day:

A community without a sense of History, is not a community at all.