Early Life and Education
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 grandfather, Jacob Kanne, graduated from the Chicago-Kent College of Law and served in the U.S. Naval Reserve as an ensign during World War I, although he was never assigned to a combat mission. Kanne, living in Chicago, became involved with ward politics in the 1920s as a prosecutor and served in local offices. He went on to serve as a delegate to the 1932 Democratic National Convention that nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt as the party's presidential candidate (though his name does not appear on the published roll of convention delegates). His mother was Methodist, and was of English ancestry.
Kanne came from the Kohen family line, and Clark's son has characterized Clark's parents' marriage, between his Methodist mother, Veneta (née Updegraff), and his Jewish father, Benjamin Jacob Kanne, as "about as multicultural as you could've gotten in 1944."
Clark was born Wesley Kanne in Chicago on December 23, 1944. His father Benjamin died on December 6, 1948, following which his mother then moved the family to Little Rock, Arkansas. This move was made for a variety of reasons, including escaping the greater cost of living in a large city such as Chicago, the support Veneta's family in Arkansas could provide, and her feeling of being an outsider to the remaining Kanne family as she did not share their religion. Once in Little Rock, Veneta married Viktor Clark, whom she met while working as a secretary for a local bank. Viktor raised Wesley as his son, and officially adopted him on Wesley's 16th birthday. Wesley's name was changed to Wesley Kanne Clark. Viktor Clark's name actually replaced that of Wesley's biological father on his birth certificate, something Wesley would later say that he wished they had not done. Veneta raised Wesley without telling him of his Jewish ancestry to protect him from the anti-Semitic activities of the Ku Klux Klan occurring in the South at the time. Although his mother was Methodist, Clark chose a Baptist church after moving to Little Rock and continued attending it throughout his childhood.
He graduated from Hall High School with a National Merit Scholarship, and helped take their swim team to the state championship, filling in for a sick teammate by swimming two legs of a relay. Clark has often repeated the anecdote that he decided he wanted to go to West Point after meeting a cadet with glasses who told Clark (who wore glasses as well) that one did not need perfect vision to attend West Point as Clark had thought. Clark applied, and was accepted on April 24, 1962.
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