By Emily Wagster PettusThe Related Press
LEXINGTON, Miss. (AP) — Robert G. Clark, who was elected in 1967 as Mississippi’s first Black lawmaker of the twentieth century and rose to the second-highest management function within the state Home of Representatives, died March 4 at age 96, his son stated.
Rep. Bryant Clark, who succeeded Robert Clark, stated his father died of pure causes at house in Holmes County, north of Jackson.
A trainer and descendant of slaves, Clark was ostracized throughout his first years on the state Capitol, relegated to sitting solo at a two-person desk within the Home chamber and ignored by White colleagues at social occasions.
By the point he left workplace 36 years later, he had served as chairman of each the Home Ethics Committee and the highly effective Schooling Committee. In a state the place almost 40 % of residents are Black, he noticed extra Black candidates win seats as voting rights have been enforced and extra majority-Black districts have been drawn, generally underneath courtroom order.
Clark additionally received the respect and assist of colleagues, Black and White, who elected him in January 1992 to Home speaker professional tempore, a place he retained till he retired in 2004.
Clark was amongst 5 activists and elected officers honored in February 2018 throughout a black-tie-optional gala on the newly opened Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.
The glitzy occasion was a lifetime away from Clark’s hardscrabble early days, when most of his relations labored in cotton fields on household land in Holmes County. As a small little one, he would sit by the aspect of the sphere together with his aged grandfather, William Clark, who was born a slave and shared vivid recollections of deprivation.
“He had by no means owned a pair of pants or sneakers till after slavery,” Robert Clark advised The Related Press in a 2018 interview. “Their feed was poured over to them in a trough identical to we feed hogs, they usually needed to get down and eat one of the simplest ways they might.”
That grandfather’s knowledge, he stated, helped give him the sense of self to turn into a pacesetter.
“I’d throw a hand of corn over and the chickens can be consuming. I’d throw one other hand of corn over there, and chickens would depart that hand of corn and run to a different hand,” Clark stated. “And I requested him, ‘Grandpa, why them previous loopy chickens bought corn and simply run to the opposite corn?’ He stated, ‘Younger man, they’re simply following the group.’ And he stated, ‘That’s one thing I by no means need you to do.’ And from feeding the chickens, that grew to become part of me — not simply following the group.”
Clark went to Michigan to earn a grasp’s diploma in schooling, after which fulfilled a promise he had made to older relations by returning to the household land in Mississippi. As a trainer and coach, he typically went into his athletes’ properties.
“I noticed lots of the mother and father couldn’t assist their kids with the teachings,” Clark stated. “And I went to the superintendent of schooling to ask him if he would implement an grownup schooling program. And he advised me, ‘No, I don’t suppose it’s in the most effective curiosity of the county to try this.’”
After the all-White native college board denied Clark’s request to start out this system that may primarily assist Black adults, he introduced his candidacy for that board. Maneuvering to maintain a Black man off the board, the native state consultant bought a change in state legislation to make that faculty board appointed quite than elected. Moderately than settle for defeat, Clark ran in opposition to that consultant, and made historical past by profitable.
As a result of Black folks have been usually not accepted within the Democratic Social gathering that managed Mississippi, Clark’s household had belonged to what they known as the “Black and Tan” phase of the Republican Social gathering when he was a toddler. With allegiances flipping within the late Nineteen Sixties, he ran his first legislative race as an unbiased. Solely later would he run, and win, as a Democrat.
On inauguration day in January 1968, Clark didn’t know if he can be allowed to take his oath. The White candidate he defeated had filed a grievance claiming he didn’t dwell in Holmes County, the place his household had lived for generations.
Clark arrived on the Capitol together with his legal professional, Marian Wright, who later based the Kids’s Protection Fund, a nationwide advocacy group for the poor. They have been standing close to a statue of the late Theodore Bilbo, an arch-segregationist who had served as Mississippi governor and U.S. senator, after they have been advised about 10 minutes earlier than the ceremony that Clark can be sworn in.
The ornate Home chamber, with marble partitions and stained-glass home windows, was full of two-person oak desks the place seatmates swapped gossip and sometimes grew to become quick pals. In January 1968, in deeply segregated Mississippi, the senior member of Clark’s native legislative delegation decreed that Clark would sit by himself.
The isolation prolonged to group dinners for legislators: “No one would sit with me,” Clark stated.
Sitting alone at tables set for six or eight created a dilemma, he recalled: “I very shortly went as much as 240 kilos. I didn’t intend to realize weight. I simply wasn’t going to depart all that meals on the desk.”
Clark and his first spouse, Essie, had two sons: Robert G. Clark III and Wandrick Bryant Clark. She died of most cancers in 1977, and he raised their sons as a widower, homeschooling them and taking them to the state Capitol whereas the Legislature was in session.
About 19 years after his first spouse’s demise, Clark married Jo Ann Ross. In 2003, he selected to not search re-election, and the seat was received by his second son. Bryant Clark additionally continued to follow legislation. Robert G. Clark III, in the meantime, served as a chancery choose in 4 counties.
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Related Press author Jeff Amy contributed from Atlanta.
