1939-
High-School Principal

National Folk Hero.

Joe Louis Clark, principal of inner-city Eastside High School in Paterson, New Jersey, gained a wide reputation as a folk hero when national news reports showed him patrolling his halls with a bullhorn and baseball bat in hand. After six years of Clark's leadership at a school where 90 percent of the students were black or Hispanic and most came from poor families, Eastside boasted order and some improvement in test scores. Parents and students praised him for restoring order and instruction to a school once called a "caldron of terror and violence," and Education Secretary William Bennett held him up as an example of what strong leadership can accomplish in the nation's most troubled urban schools. Clark exhibited that leadership by working the halls and corridors like a consummate politician, shouting through his bullhorn at students, but usually addressing...