Wesley Kanne Clark, Sr. Clark was valedictorian of his class at West Point , was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford where he obtained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics , and later graduated from the Command and General Staff College with a master's degree in military science.
He spent 34 years in the Army and the Department of Defense , receiving many military decorations , several honorary knighthoods , and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Clark joined the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination as a candidate on September 17, , but withdrew from the primary race on February 11, , after winning the Oklahoma state primary, endorsing and campaigning for the eventual Democratic nominee, John Kerry.
Clark currently leads a political action committee โ "WesPAC" โ which was formed after the primaries, [1] [2] and used it to support numerous Democratic Party candidates in the midterm elections. Clark's paternal great-grandfather was a Belarusian Jew who immigrated to the United States in response to the Pale of Settlement and anti-Semitic violence from Russian pogroms.
Clark's father, Benjamin J. Naval Reserve as an ensign during World War I , although he was never assigned to a combat mission. Kanne, living in Chicago , Illinois , became involved with ward politics in the s as a prosecutor and served in local offices.
He went on to serve as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention that nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt as the party's presidential candidate [8] though his name does not appear on the published roll of convention delegates. Kanne came from the Kohen family line, [10] and Clark's son has characterized his grandparents' marriage, between Jewish Benjamin and Methodist Veneta Kanne, [11] as "about as multicultural as you could've gotten in Clark was born Wesley Kanne in Chicago on December 23, His father Benjamin died on December 6, , following which his mother then moved the family to Little Rock , Arkansas.
