Alexander Clark

Alexander G. Clark was an African-American diplomat who served as United States Ambassador to Liberia. He was born February 25, 1826 in Pennsylvania to parents who had been freed from slavery. His father's name was John Clark. Clark is most famous for suing to allow his Afro-American daughter to attend public school in Iowa.

When Clark was around 13, his family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio for his education and to learn the barbering trade. In 1842 Clark arrived in Muscatine, Iowa where he spent most of the rest of his life. In 1863, during the American Civil War (1861-1865), he enrolled in the First Iowa Colored Volunteers and was promoted sergeant-major, but did not muster due to a physical defect in his left ankle. He then worked to recruit for the Union Army. He worked as a barber, orator, entrepreneur, newspaper editor for The Conservator (which he published in Chicago in partnership with Ferdinand L. Barnett), and as a lawyer. He was very involved in civil rights for the state of Iowa and was involved on a national level.

In 1867 Clark sent his daughter Susan to a local school in Muscatine, where she was refused admittance due to her race. Muscatine had separate schools for blacks, however these schools were not located near where the black children lived, making it difficult to attend and the quality of the instructors was lacking as well. Clark took his fight all the way to the Iowa Supreme Court where he won a ruling based on the Iowa Constitution of 1857 which states that the board of education is required to "provide for the education of all the youths of the State, through a system of common schools. Requiring black students to attend a separate school violated the law which "expressly gives the same rights to all the youths."

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