Biography
Elmore Clark, also printed Elmore Clarke, was a Black teenager held in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in the 1933 prosecution for the death of Vaudine Maddox. His family retained International Labor Defense lawyers, but local authorities prevented them from defending him and his co-defendants. During an official transfer in August 1933, Clark, Dan Pippen Jr. and A. T. Harden were shot. Pippen and Harden died; Clark survived with multiple wounds. The International Labor Defense challenged the prosecution as a racial frame-up, accused the officers of responsibility for the shootings, and campaigned for Clark's release. A later account pictured him alive and reported that he remained under guard.
Contemporary original newspaper source; individual page evidence retained in review audit 877. Exact individual custody dates and duration are not inferred from relative dates or collective claims.
The August 15 Tuscaloosa dispatch published in the August 16, 1933 Daily Worker corrects the earlier unconfirmed reports of Elmore Clarke's death: he was found alive late on August 14 near Woodstock, with bullet wounds, and was immediately returned to Tuscaloosa County Jail. The same Pippen Jr. and Hardin cohort, location and Sheriff Shamblin identify the existing defendant printed elsewhere as Clark. The paper reports his account of pulling the other victims' bodies over himself when the gang opened fire; the sheriff's version about broken handcuffs and escape remains separately attributed. This adds documented survival and renewed detention, not a death date, exact new jail-admission day, final release or complete custody total. The earlier missing-person narrative is preserved as the contemporary report it was.
