In his second term as a member of the Mississippi House, Bryant Clark presided over the chamber — a rare accomplishment for a sophomore in a chamber that then and now rewards experience.
The Holmes County Democrat presided in the House as if he were a seasoned veteran.
In a sense he was. Bryant Clark is the son of Robert Clark, the first Black Mississippian elected to the state Legislature since the 1800s and the first Black Mississippian to preside over the House chamber since Reconstruction. Robert Clark rose from being a House outcast to serving three terms as pro tempore, who presides in the absence of the speaker.
With Clark’s death earlier this month at age 96, much has been written and said about Robert Clark, the civil rights icon. While his accomplishments were groundbreaking in the history of the state, the measure of the man is, unbelievably, much more.
Before being elected to the House, Clark was a schoolteacher and landowner in Holmes County. Both of those accomplishments played key roles in Clark’s election in 1967.
As a teacher, Clark went before the all-white Board of Education to ask that the school district participate in a federal program that provided adult literacy classes. The board said it would do so only if the superintendent supported the program.
The superintendent said he did not. Clark said at that time he was going to challenge the superintendent in the next election.
True to his word, Clark went to the Holmes County Courthouse to qualify to run for superintendent. But officials there chuckled, telling Clark that the state House member from Holmes County had changed the law to make the post appointed rather than elected.
Clark, not deterred, chose to run against that state House member, who he defeated in an election that made national news.
At the time, Holmes, like many counties in Mississippi, had a Black-majority population and the times were changing as Blacks were finally granted the right to vote. But that change happened quicker in Holmes because at the time the county had one of the highest percentages of Black property owners in the nation.
Black Mississippians who did challenge the status quo — such as voting or God-forbid running for political office — faced the possibility of violence and economic consequences.
Black residents of Holmes County had at least a little protection from economic consequences because many owned property thanks in large part to government programs and efforts of national groups to help them purchase land.
“It might have just been 40 acres and an old mule, but they said it was their 40 acres and old mule,” Bryant Clark said.
But there is more that makes Robert Clark’s accomplishments notable. As he served in the House under watchful and sometimes hateful eyes as the first Black legislator, he had the added burden of being a single father raising two boys.
When Clark’s wife died in 1977, Bryant Clark was age 3.
The Clark boys essentially grew up at the Capitol. Bryant remembers sitting in the House Education Committee room where his father served as chair (another significant civil rights accomplishment) and listening on the Capitol intercom system to the proceedings in the chamber when the House was in session.
Years later, the father would watch from his home in Holmes County via the internet as his son presided.
“He was proud,” Bryant Clark said, adding his father would at times offer critiques of his rules interpretations.
But Robert Clark probably did not have to offer many critiques. His son most likely learned the rules at least in part through osmosis. At one point, Clark was home schooling his son during the legislative session. But Bryant Clark, now an attorney, said his father was chastised for not enrolling him in school by then-Rep. Alyce Clarke, D-Jackson, the first Black woman elected to the Legislature and childhood friend of Bryant Clark’s late mother.
So to say Clark was a typical sophomore in terms of knowing the rules and the nuances of the Capitol by the time he got to preside would be an understatement.
Bryant Clark recalled then-Speaker Billy McCoy calling him into his office and telling him he was being named vice chair of the Rules Committee for the term beginning in 2008 and most likely would preside as his father had made history by doing.
“He said he expected me to be speaker one day and he would be an old man back at his home in Rienzi reading about me in the newspaper. But times change. The state turned red,” Bryant Clark said.
His son’s speakership would have been another historic chapter for Robert Clark the father and for all of Mississippi.
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