Book description
When Thomas D. Clark was hired to teach history at the University of
Kentucky in 1931, he began a career that would span nearly
three-quarters of a century and would profoundly change not only the
history department and the university but the entire Commonwealth. His
still-definitive History of Kentucky (1937) was one of more than
thirty books he would write or edit that dealt with Kentucky, the
South, and the American frontier. In addition to his wide scholarly
contributions, Clark devoted his life to the preservation of
Kentucky's historical records. He began this crusade by collecting
vast stores of Kentucky's military records from the War of 1812, the
Mexican War, and the Civil War. His efforts resulted in the
Commonwealth's first archival system and the subsequent creation of
the Kentucky Library and Archives, the University of Kentucky Special
Collections and Archives, the Kentucky Oral History Commission, the
Kentucky History Center (recently named for him), and the University
Press of Kentucky. Born in 1903 on a cotton farm in Louisville,
Mississippi, Thomas Dionysius Clark would follow a long and winding
path to find his life's passion in the study of history. He dropped
out of school after seventh grade to work first at a sawmill and then
on a canal dredgeboat before resuming his formal education. Clark's
earliest memories -- hearing about local lynch-mob violence and
witnessing the destruction of virgin forest -- are an invaluable
window into the national issues of racial injustice and environmental
depredation. In many ways, the story of Dr. Clark's life is the story
of America in the twentieth century. In My Century in History, Clark
offers vivid memories of his journey, both personal and academic, a
journey that took him from Mississippi to Kentucky and North Carolina,
to leadership of the nation's major historical organizations, and to
visiting professorships in Austria, England, Greece, and India, as
well as in universities throughout the United States. An enormously
popular public lecturer and teacher, he touched thousands of lives in
Kentucky and around the world. With his characteristic wit and
insight, Clark now offers his many admirers one final volume of
history -- his own.
"Clark writes with the discipline and precision of a longtime
academic, describing his journeys throughout the state in search of
obscure records and his methodical collection of and organization of
what he found.... A fitting capstone for Clark's lifetime of
contributions to the region." -- Lexington Herald-Leader
