Robert G. Clark Jr. passed away at 96, having served as a trailblazer in Mississippi politics as its first Black legislator since Reconstruction. Despite facing severe discrimination, he became a powerful political figure over 36 years in the state legislature. Initially, he worked in isolation, sitting alone for years, and enduring insults within a hostile environment. His fight for equality paralleled the civil rights movement's broader struggle against desegregation in Mississippi during the 1960s. His legacy continues through his son, who succeeded him in office and carries on his work.
When he entered the State Capitol in Jackson for the first time on a cold January day in 1968, Mr. Clark, a former high school teacher and coach, was assigned a solo desk at the far edge of the chamber. Other legislators were paired, but nobody would sit with the lone Black man in the Mississippi House of Representatives, an independent who was backed by the breakaway Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
Once, he found a watermelon on his desk. When he rose to speak, he was cut off. They'd cut me out, and I couldn't get the floor, he told the historian John Dittmer in 2013 in an oral history for the Library of Congress.
I was ready to walk out! he recalled. Walk out! A reserved yet genial politician, Mr. Clark was on the cusp of the revolution that transformed politics in Mississippi, a bastion of the most virulent white resistance to desegregation in the 1960s.
For many years he waged a lonely fight. Mr. Clark sat alone for eight years. Previously, Black people had had difficulty being admitted to the chamber even as spectators.
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