A very private public citizen : the life of Grenville Clark / Nancy Peterson Hill.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hill, Nancy Peterson, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lawyers--United States--Biography.

Lawyers.

Clark, Grenville, 1882-1967.

Clark, Grenville.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (280 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Columbia : University of Missouri Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Grenville Clark was born to wealth and privilege in Manhattan, where his maternal grandfather, LeGrand Bouton Cannon, was an industry titan, retired Civil War colonel, and personal friend of Abraham Lincoln. Clark grew up on a first-name basis with both Presidents Roosevelt, and his close friends included Supreme Court justices. He was well known and respected in the inner circles of business, government, and education. In A Very Private Public Citizen: The Life of Grenville Clark, Nancy Peterson Hill gives life to the unsung account of this great and largely anonymous American hero and reveals how the scope of Clark's life and career reflected his selfless passion for progress, equality, and peace. As a member of the "Corporation," Harvard's elite governing board, Clark wrote a still-relevant treatise on academic freedom. He fought a successful public battle with his good friend President Franklin Roosevelt over FDR's attempt to "pack" the Supreme Court in 1937. He refused pay while serving as a private advisor for the Secretary of War of the United States during the Second World War, and he worked closely with the NAACP to uphold civil rights for African Americans during the tumultuous 1950's and '60's. Clark devoted his last decades to a quest for world peace through limited but enforceable world law, rewriting the charter of the United Nations and traveling the globe to lobby the world's leaders. An enthusiastic husband, father, and friend, Clark was a lawyer, civil rights activist, traveler, advisor, and world citizen at large. Memories from Clark's family and friends weave through the book, as do Clark's own inimitable observations on his life and the world in which he lived. A Very Private Public Citizen brings Clark out of the shadows, offering readers an inspiring example of a true patriot and humanitarian, more concerned with the well-being of his country and his fellow man than with his own fame.

Contents:

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Ninth-generation Manhattanite

Life on the street

Wall Street

Domestication : Clark the family man

Public service provocateur : the Plattsburg camps

Wartime : building on Plattsburg

Suburbia, breakdown, and recovery

Full speed ahead

Taking on the president : Grenville Clark, Franklin Roosevelt, and the 1937 court-packing battle

Defending rabble-rousers

Preparedness redux : the draft, World War II, War Department service

Retreat to Dublin : organizing for peace

Resisting cold warriors, writing for peace, defending academic freedom

Uneasy peace

the 1950's

Sprint to the finish : the 1960's

Legacy, lessons, relevance

Postscript : final words from the source.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed November 12, 2014).

ISBN:

9780826273192

082627319X

OCLC:

899261583