his mother was Minnie King Claiborne, a schoolteacher in Little Rock, Arkansas. According to Harry, the Ku Klux Klan's grand wizard once criticized Harry's father, Arthur, for being the only white farmer in the region who was not a member of the organization. Arthur responded, "I won't join any organization whose members need to wear hoods over their faces." After later saving an immigrant farmer from a lynching, Arthur knew the KKK would return for retribution and waited at the immigrant's farm with a shotgun. When the KKK arrived, one of their members approached a barn with a lit torch, but Arthur fired a round of buckshot into him and knocked him from his horse. According to Harry, "Never again was a man lynched by the KKK in his community because they knew they would have to answer to [Arthur] Claiborne." The event had a profound impact on Harry's worldview. Growing up in McRae, Claiborne gained a reputation for his speaking ability. He would often accompany his grandfather to view court proceedings at the White County Courthouse in nearby Searcy, Arkansas. Claiborne attended Ouachita Baptist University. He was determined to attend law school at Louisiana State University so he hitchhiked to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, seeking admission. At the time one only needed two years of college for admittance to law school. After he was refused admission, Claiborne hitchhiked back home to Arkansas and caught a ride with a salesman named Schneider, who told Claiborne that he was childhood friends with Judge Albert B. Neil, the chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Mr. Schneider gave Claiborne a letter of introduction, and after visiting Neil in person, Claiborne was granted admission to Cumberland School of Law, then part of Cumberland University in Tennessee. He graduated from Cumberland with a Bachelor of Laws in June 1941 and returned to Arkansas, where he was a clerk in the Coulter Law Firm of Little Rock (Pulaski County). Pre-judicial career In 1942 during World War II, Claiborne was admitted to practice in his home state of Arkansas, but since the war had just begun, he enlisted in the United States Army and was sent to the Santa Ana Army Air Base. He served in the military police force. He would later say that he was inspired by his father's stand against the Ku Klux Klan and so refused to go along with the internment of