reportedly proposing a three percent tax because he feared a higher rate would be proposed if he did not take the initiative. With this new revenue, Clements authorized $6 million to improve and expand the state park system. The improvement program included twelve large parks and several smaller ones, with Kentucky Dam Park being the centerpiece. To oversee the developments, he appointed Henry Ward as commissioner of conservation. Between 1948 and 1950, New York was the only state that spent more than Kentucky on its park system. Clements was one of several people who have been referred to as the "father of Kentucky's state parks". Although the park system was started in 1926 by Willard Rouse Jillson, Clements did much to develop them during his administration. Clements authorized significant road building projects. During his administration, the state funded or built 3,800 miles of rural roads and 4,000 miles of primary roads. Further, he initiated construction of the Kentucky Turnpike and the Western Kentucky Parkway. The state also assumed maintenance of 6,000 miles of county roads under Clements. During Clements' tenure, only Texas spent more money on developing its roads. Besides improving the roadways themselves, Clements replaced the Kentucky Highway Patrol, which had become a corrupt vehicle of political patronage, with the Kentucky State Police. Clements also used some of the revenue generated from his tax increases to raise the salaries of the state's public school teachers. He approved a 15% increase in funding to the Minimum Foundation Program which provided funding for poor school districts. This was not enough, however, to stave off a 1950 protest march on his office by teachers demanding that he raise another $10 million for education. Clements' lieutenant governor and successor, Lawrence Wetherby, was able to meet this demand in 1951 by using increased tax revenue resulting from the Korean War. Leading national accreditation groups attempted to disaccredit many of Kentucky's public colleges during Clements administration in order to end longstanding political interference in the higher education system. Clements worked to help these colleges maintain their accreditation and to secure re-accreditation for Morehead State Teachers College. In 1948, he weakened Kentucky's Day Law—which enforced segregation of the state's education system—by providing an exception for black medical personnel to take post-graduate courses in white public hospitals. He also supported a 1948 bill that allowed blacks to pursue medical training at the University of Louisville. His efforts