Alexander G. Clark (born February 25, 1826 - died June 3, 1891) was an African-American business and activist who served as US Ambassador to Liberia in 1890-1891, where he died at the office. Clark was famous for demanding in 1868 to get admission for his daughter to attend a local state school, obtaining a constitutional verdict for integration from the Iowa Supreme Court of 86 years before the US Supreme Court ruling. Brown v. Board of Education (1954). That year he also gained the right to African-Americans in Iowa to vote.
Born freely in Washington, Pennsylvania, Clark moved at the age of 13 to study barbering with an uncle in Cincinnati, Ohio. After working on a steamboat, he settled at the age of 16 years in Muscatine, Iowa, a town on the Mississippi River. There he worked as a barber, married, acquired real estate, and became a civil rights activist. Active in Republicans and known for his speaking skills, he was nicknamed the "Western Colored Orator".
Later in life Clark finished college and earned a law degree, a few years after his son. He moved to Chicago, where he owns and edits the Conservator, and then to the East Coast to work as a lawyer. He is buried in Muscatine, where his home has been preserved.
Video Alexander Clark
Early life and family
Alexander G. Clark was born February 25, 1826 in Washington, Pennsylvania to parents who had been freed from slavery. His parents are John Clark and Rebecca (Darnes) Clark. When Clark was about 13 years old, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to live with his uncle and learn to trade barbering; his uncle also saw his education in other fields. Barber is considered middle class in this period. Two years later, young Clark started working on the river steamboat, George Washington .
Maps Alexander Clark
Settling in Muscatine
In May 1842 at the age of 16 years Clark settled in the river city of Muscatine, Iowa (then known as Bloomington), where he made his life. She works as a barber and becomes an entrepreneur, acquires real estate and sells wood as firewood to steamers that frequent the Mississippi River. Barbering was a service trade that helped him meet influential white people in the city as well as blacks. According to later correspondence, Clark appears to have met and befriended the abolitionist Frederick Douglass in the 1840s. They were still in touch in the late 1880s.
Over the next two decades, this area along the Mississippi River is a destination for other African Americans. Located 90 miles upstream of the Missouri slave state's borders, Muscatine attracted the largest black population in the state, 62 in 1850, with hundreds more in 1860. Some blacks settled there after fleeing from the South through the river as slaves of the buron ; others came from the free eastern state. Quakers and other religious groups support abolitionism.
Once established, on October 9, 1848, Clark married Catherine Griffin from Iowa City. He has been freed from slavery in Virginia at age 3. The Clarks has five children, two of whom died in infancy. The surviving children include Susan and Alexander G. Clark, Jr.
That same year Clark was among the 34 founding members of the local African Episcopal Methodist Church in Muscatine, helping to buy land for their first building, which finishes next year. The AME Church is the first independent black denomination in the United States, founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early 19th century.
In 1863, during the American Civil War (1861-1865), Clark helped recruit the "Iowa Colored Army to-60, originally known as the 1st Iowa Infantry, Descent Africa." Despite a small minority in the state, at the end of the war, a total of nearly 1,100 blacks from Iowa and Missouri served in the regiment. Clark enrolled at the age of 37 and was ranked as a major sergeant, but he was unable to collect due to a physical defect in his left ankle.
Clark was pressed to increase civil rights for African Americans in Iowa, as well as related issues at the national level. In 1855 he had signed a petition to the state legislature with more than 30 other African-Americans from Muscatine County, seeking a repeal of a law prohibiting free blacks migration to the state. The legislature did not change the law, but the migration to the area increased after the war and the emancipation of slaves. As industries expanded in other areas, black population centers moved to other cities like Des Moines. After the Civil War, Clark and African-American veterans pressed the Iowa legislature for voting rights, acquiring it in 1868.
In 1867, Clark sent his daughter, Susan, to a local public school in Muscatine, where he was denied entry because of his race. Muscatine has a separate school for blacks, but it is located more than a mile from their home. In addition, Clark thinks that the quality of the instructors is low. He sued the school board in 1868 for the right of his daughter to attend his local school. The local city court decided to support him but the school council appealed.
The Iowa State Supreme Court also ruled in favor of it, noting that under the Iowa Constitution of 1857, the education council was required to "provide education for all State youth, through the public school system." The court ruled that it requires black students to attend separate schools that violate the law " firmly granting equal rights to all youth. "Due to Clark's actions, Iowa was one of the first countries to integrate its schools.The case of the country was quoted by the US Supreme Court in its verdict at Brown v. Board of Education ( 1954) years later.
After the American Civil War, Clark became increasingly politically active in Republicans and in Freemasonry, a growing fraternal organization. In 1869, he was a delegate to the Washington, DC Colored National Convention and was among the committees who met with President Ulysses S. Grant. He served as a spokesman for the committee. In the same year Clark was elected vice-president of the Iowa State State convention. In 1872 he was a great delegate-at-Grant National Convention for the Republican Party. Because of his ability as a speaker, Clark is known as the "Western Colored Orator". In 1873, President Grant offered him his appointment as consul to Aux Cayes, Haiti, but he refused the position because he thought his pay was too low.
Law school and Chicago
After Clark fought for his son's admission to the University of Iowa, Alexander Clark, Jr. graduating in 1879 as the first black person to earn a law degree from a college in Iowa City. Then Clark Sr. also studied there, graduating in 1884 with a law degree. He and his son practiced together for a while.
He moved to Chicago. He had previously invested in The Conservator, a newspaper founded by Ferdinand L. Barnett in Chicago in 1878. In the late 1880s he bought newspapers, also served as an editor. Then Clark moved to the East Coast, where he worked as a lawyer.
Clark was appointed on August 16, 1890 by President Benjamin Harrison as US Secretary of State for Liberia. This was one of the highest appointments of a black man by a US president until then. Harrison also pointed to Clark's longtime friend Frederick Douglass as US Secretary of State to Haiti. Clark died of fever at his office in Monrovia, Liberia on June 3, 1891. His body was returned to Muscatine for burial with praise at Greenwood Cemetery. His grave was marked with tall warning tombstones.
Inheritance and honor
- Alexander Clark's home in Muscatine has been preserved; it's listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It was bought and restored as a private residence by Kent Sissell, who has worked most of his life to preserve and present Clark's story.
- In 1977 the newly dedicated Clark House high building; named in Clark's honor, this is "Muscatine's first high building to provide subsidized housing for low-income elderly residents."
- The Alexander G. Clark Project is a website devoted to Clark, created and maintained by Dan Clark (no relationship).
- Lost In History: Alexander Clark is a 2012 documentary film about activists, directed and written by Marc Rosenwasser and produced by Jacob Rosdail; produced and broadcast by Iowa Public Television. It is hosted and narrated by opera star Simon Estes.
See also
- Alexander Clark House, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
References
- Iowa Public Television "INAUGURATION OF THE GOVERNOR 2003"
- "From Emancipation to Equality: Alexander Clark's Stand for Civil Rights in Iowa", Cooperative History
Other readings
- Gallaher, Ruth A. "Color Conventions," Palimpsest , Vol. II. State Historical Society of Iowa, May 1921. Iowa City, Iowa. pp. 178-81.
- Randall, J.J. Little Known Stories of Muscatine , Fairall Service. l949. Muscatine, Iowa.
- Witter, F.M., Walton, Alice B., Walton, J.P., History of Muscatine County. Western Historical Society, 1879. Chicago. p. 597-598.
External links
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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