Joseph S. Clark; Fought for Reforms as Senator

Former U.S. Sen. Joseph S. Clark, a liberal and civil rights activist who as mayor brought reforms to Philadelphia’s City Hall and tried to do the same in the halls of Congress, has died. He was 88.

Clark died at home Friday, said his wife, Iris. No cause of death was given.

Clark became Philadelphia’s first Democratic mayor in 67 years in 1951 and later took his advocacy of civil rights to the Senate.

A series of speeches he gave in 1963, later published in book form as “The Senate Establishment,” attacked the upper house as “a self-perpetuating oligarchy.” He also wrote another book, “Congress: The Sapless Branch.”

His election as mayor ended a corruption-ridden Republican administration and he replaced the city’s spoils system with Civil Service regulations.

He took black friends to the Philadelphia Cricket Club near his home--the first time in the club’s 100-year history that blacks had been guests.

In 1956, Clark was elected to the first of two Senate terms.

He sponsored the Manpower Development and Training Act and the Area Redevelopment Act, but was often frustrated by the chamber’s ruling powers.

“The Senate establishment is almost the antithesis of democracy,” Clark told his Senate colleagues in 1963. “It is what might be called a self-perpetuating oligarchy, with only mild overtones of a plutocracy.”

James MacGregor Burns, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, called Clark’s speech “of historical significance, because it aims squarely at this century-old coalition as it operates quietly in the Senate. He has moved the power process out of dim and musty committee and caucus rooms into the spotlight of the Senate floor.”

Clark did not initially support John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign, but he campaigned hard after the Massachusetts senator was nominated. Kennedy asked him to draw up a civil rights agenda for his New Frontier programs.

Clark eventually gained seats on the Senate’s Foreign Relations, Labor and Public Welfare and Rules and Administration committees.

But his relations with President Lyndon B. Johnson were cool. He complained that the War on Poverty lacked sufficient funds. He also broke with the Administration over the war in Vietnam.

When he sought reelection in 1968, local Democratic leaders failed to work enthusiastically for him and he lost to Republican Richard Schweiker.