A Kentucky-and Mississippi-Treasure: What a life!

Thomas Dionysius Clark, Kentucky’s
first Historian Laureate, turned 100 last
year. In a 1990 ceremony to recognize
the General Assembly’s creation of the
position, then-Governor Brereton C.
Jones said “Tom Clark is a Kentucky
treasure. He probably has more
credibility than any other Kentuckian
in the field of history, public affairs, and
political reform.”

Clark was born July 14, 1903, in a
two-room log cabin in the “mud-flat
Mississippi” town of Louisville. His
father was a cotton farmer, his mother a
public school teacher. Following
seventh grade, young Tom worked two
years on a farm, then at a sawmill, and
then as cabin boy and deckhand on a
dredge boat. At age 18, he entered
Choctaw County Agricultural High
School. By 1925, he had his high school
diploma and, with money earned by
growing 10 acres of cotton, enrolled at
the University of Mississippi.

In 1928, he took a train to Lexington
to pursue graduate studies at the
University of Kentucky. Since then, he
has devoted his indefatigable energy to
his adopted state, as a teacher, writer,
and civic leader. Returning to UK in
1931, he was soon one of the most
popular lecturers. “I became interested
in Kentucky’s history right off, and I
have never lost that interest,” he has
said. “There are historians who say
state history has no significance and is
a local, anecdotal thing. This is wrong,
wrong, wrong. That is where the people
live. Local history gives readers a sense
of time and place. Students need to
know how their communities evolved.”
At UK, he influenced the lives of
thousands of students. Some claimed
you really hadn’t been to UK if you
hadn’t taken Clark’s course. He was
central in the establishment of the
University of Kentucky Press and, later,
of the University Press of Kentucky.

Clark was appalled that Kentucky’s
archives were in total disarray and that
irreplaceable records were sold as scrap.
He traveled to every county, persuading
officials to preserve as much as possible.
He personally rescued many documents
headed for the incinerator.
He combined these trips with
lectures about history. A born
storyteller, he can turn a lectern into a
cracker barrel, and makes good use of
humor. He was always in great demand
as a speaker, and maintained a
whirlwind pace even after he “retired”
from UK in 1968. His curiosity prompts
him to pick the brains of everyone he
meets. He talks with state game officials
about hunting and with locals about
farming and crop prices. He is warm
and engaging, with a chuckle, a story, a
twinkle in the eye, innate courtesy, and
unfailing good manners.

His drive sparked the creation of the
Kentucky Department of Libraries and
Archives. He was also the inspiration
and driving force (along with Libby
Jones, then the state’s first lady) of the
$29 million Kentucky History Center
and Museum in Frankfort.

His 1937 book, A History of Kentucky,
is a classic. Clark’s work combines
prodigious research and splendid writing:
the result is a clear, simple narrative, told
with grace. About the book he says, “I
determined that what I wrote was going
to have some style.” He believes history
is so important it simply must be
presented in a way that makes it
interesting and accessible. Other books
include histories of Clark County and
Laurel County, The Kentucky in the
Rivers of America series, Kentucky: Land
of Contrast, Agrarian Kentucky, and
Historic Maps of Kentucky. He was “only
74” when he wrote the four-volume
Indiana University: Midwestern Pioneer.
At age 99, he coauthored People’s House:
Governors’ Mansions of Kentucky.

He was chief editor of two massive
multivolume publications: Travels in the
Old South and Travels in the New South.
Other Southern-focus works include
The Beginnings of the L&N: A Pioneer
Southern Railroad, The Rural Papers and
the New South, and The Southern
Country Editor. For Pills, Petticoats, and
Plows, his magisterial account of the
Southern country store, Clark drew on
huge stacks of old ledgers that he had
cajoled from store keepers. He is
presently serving as consulting editor of
the agriculture volume of the second
edition of the Encyclopedia of Southern
Culture, now in progress.

Kentucky was America’s first frontier,
and this whetted a broader interest in the
West, resulting in Rampaging Frontier in
1939 and, 36 years later, The Great
American Frontier. Clark is the most
productive historian Kentucky has had:
32 books, hundreds of monographs, and
many introductions to books by others.
Clark’s love affair with his adopted state
allowed him to use history for constructive
criticism. A constant theme was the
necessity of more resources for education.
He decried “the shameful waste of
precious human creative talent.” He is
still reminding Kentucky that it can, and
must, do better for itself if it truly wants a
more promising future. He is, for example,
appalled at the filth and coal silt that still
pollute the Kentucky River basin. He says
that we “have mowed down the forests,
spewed poisonous chemicals into streams,
discharged cesspools and sewers over its
banks, and festooned its shores with
plastic jugs.”

He is equally aghast at the mindless
devastation of hardwood forests.
Kentucky land companies ravaged the
hills, leaving little but stumps. “Mills
stood idle and abandoned, railroad
trackage fell into disrepair and decay,
logging equipment rusted at the spot
where it loaded the last logs.”

Thomas D. Clark of Kentucky is a
festschrift marking Clark’s unsurpassed
achievements as scholar, educator,
preservationist, agrarian, advocate and
mentor.

His authority is based on academic
study, but unlike more cloistered
colleagues, he used his authority for
impassioned advocacy. Thomas D. Clark
has recorded Kentucky’s past; he also
is helping shape Kentucky’s future.
At 101, he is still going strong. He
was recently Grand Marshal of the
Kentucky Mountain Laurel Festival in
Pineville (formerly Cumberland Ford)
Kentucky, and is the sparkplug of
the effort to create a historic site at this
critical point in the Wilderness Road.

DAVID M. BURNS