There’s fascinating history to be found in Muscatine. Before adopting the name Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens briefly wrote for the Muscatine Journal while his brother was the paper’s editor. Long before Field of Dreams, it saw some of America’s earliest minor-league baseball teams take the field. Neither Twain nor those teams left much of a mark on Iowa, but Alexander Clark did.
Born in Pennsylvania in 1826 to parents who had formerly been enslaved, Clark arrived in Muscatine in 1842, four years before Iowa became a state. Muscatine was a bustling river city and had more Black residents than any other city in Iowa at the time. Clark worked numerous jobs, including running his own barbershop, and grew into a community leader. In 1848, he married Catherine Griffin. The couple had five children. Two died as infants, but Rebecca, Susan and Alexander Jr. lived long lives.
After just a decade in Muscatine, Clark was leading efforts to remove legal barriers imposed on Black Iowans. Following the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Clark offered to help recruit Black Iowans to fight in the U.S. Army, but his offer was rejected.
He continued to lobby for the inclusion of Black men in the fight against the Confederacy, and in 1863, after the Lincoln administration decided to create “colored regiments,” Clark took the lead in raising the six companies of men who became the First Iowa Volunteers (African Descent). Clark himself enlisted, and served as a sergeant major.
After the war, Clark led his fellow Black veterans in a campaign to secure their right to vote. The Iowa Constitution specified that only white men, 21 and older, were eligible to vote. But in 1868, Iowa voters approved an amendment removing the word “white” from voter eligibility requirements. It wasn’t until 1870 that the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, intended to remove racial barriers to voting, was ratified. (These changes only applied to men. It wasn’t until 1920 that women’s right to vote was added to the Constitution.)
Securing the right to vote wasn’t the battle for equality Clark was fighting in 1868. Susan, the Clarks’ younger daughters, enrolled Public School No. 2, located just a couple of blocks from the family home in 1865. She was one of two Black students to start school that year. Two days into the school year, Muscatine’s school board declared “no negroes should attend the public schools.” Susan and her classmate were barred from the school.
After Susan attended the “African School” at a local church for two years, Clark unsuccessfully attempted to re-enroll her at Public School No. 2. Following that rejection, he sued, and in June 1868 the Iowa Supreme Court ruled racial segregation violated both Iowa law and the state constitution. It was the first such legal victory in the United States, and 86 years later when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, it cited the Clark case as a precedent. In 2019, the Muscatine Community School District changed the name of West Middle School to Susan Clark Junior High School to honor her memory.
Alexander Clark Jr. also made history. In 1879, he became the first Black Iowan to graduate from law school. He also inspired his father, and five years later Alexander Clark became the second Black Iowan to earn a law degree.
In the years after the Civil War, Clark’s reputation as a leader gained him national attention. In 1890, President Benjamin Harrison appointed him as U.S. Minister to Liberia. (At that time, a minister functioned as an ambassador.) Clark represented the United States in that West African country until his death from a fever the following year. His body was returned to the United States, and buried with honors in Greenwood Cemetery in Muscatine.
The home Clark had built for his family in 1879, after a fire destroyed their previous home, still stands in Muscatine. In 1975, the Italianate-style brick house was moved 200 feet to make way for a new apartment building. The house has since been added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The house on 3rd Street in the West Hills Historic District isn’t open to the public, but the history-minded still pass by to pay homage to a man so integral to Iowa’s civil rights history.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s December 2023 issue as a part of Peak Iowa, a collection of fascinating state stories, sites and people.
