PATERSON, N.J. — Joe Louis Clark, the principal at Paterson, New Jersey's Eastside High who inspired a major motion picture, died Tuesday at the age of 82, his family announced. A longtime resident of ...

*Morgan Freeman famously played New Jersey educator Joe Clark, the high school principal who inspired the 1989 movie “Lean on Me.” Clark died Tuesday after a “long battle with illness,” his family ...

A legendary American educator died this week. Joe Clark was 82 years old. And in the 1980s, he was principal of Eastside High in Paterson, N.J., a school where crime and drug use were rampant. Early ...

Joe Louis Clark, the baseball bat and bullhorn-wielding principal whose unwavering commitment to his students and uncompromising disciplinary methods inspired the 1989 film “Lean on Me,” died at his ...