Ala. Sheriff James Clark; Embodied Violent Bigotry

Among the dozens of marchers seriously injured was John R. Lewis, a march leader and future congressman from Georgia.

Captured on national television, the Bloody Sunday incident spurred widespread revulsion. Even Gov. George C. Wallace, who had earlier sparked a national showdown over a refusal to integrate public schools, reprimanded the state troopers and Mr. Clark.

The Selma event galvanized congressional support that August to pass the Voting Rights Act to prohibit racial discrimination in balloting. The number of Alabama's registered black voters reportedly rose from 92,700 in 1965 to 250,000 in 1967. Mr. Clark was voted from office because of the increase in black voter registration.

James Gardner Clark Jr. was born Sept. 17, 1922, in Elba, a small town in southeastern Coffee County. During World War II, he served in the Army Air Forces as an engineer/gunner aboard bombers in the Aleutian Islands.

He settled in Dallas County after the war and became a cattle farmer. Then-Gov. James E. "Big Jim" Folsom, a childhood friend, appointed him sheriff in 1955 after the death of the previous officeholder.

Early on, Mr. Clark organized several hundred men to help in rescue missions during natural disasters. The group formed the core of his volunteer force that, as the civil rights movement gained momentum, patrolled the county to suppress racial uprisings.

After leaving office, Mr. Clark took odd jobs. He was next in the news in 1978 when he pleaded guilty to conspiring to import more than three tons of marijuana from Colombia. He was sentenced to two years in prison and served about nine months.

"Have you ever been hungry?" he later asked an Alabama reporter when questioned about the conviction. "You get pretty desperate when you get hungry, don't you?"

After prison, Mr. Clark became a mobile-home salesman in the Selma area. In interviews, he remained unrepentant about his years as sheriff. He continued to denigrate the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights figures of the 1960s as cowards.

He was credited as the author of "The Jim Clark Story: I Saw Selma Raped," a 1966 booklet he later said someone else wrote.

His marriage to Louise Clark ended in divorce. Survivors include five children; a sister; a brother; and 11 grandchildren.