Colia Clark
Colia L. Liddell Lafayette Clark (July 21, 1940 – November 4, 2022) was an American activist and politician.[1] Clark was the Green Party's candidate for the United States Senate in New York in 2010 and 2012.[2][3]
Clark was a veteran of the civil rights, black power, and pan-African movements. She was a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and played a key role establishing equal voting rights in Selma, Alabama. She was also an organizer with the Birmingham campaign, as well as throughout Mississippi. Her work included activism in the fields of women's rights and workers' rights, as well as activism and advocacy for homeless people and youth. She worked with the Cynthia McKinney for president campaign, with "Power to the People". Clark was a member of the Reconstruction Party (USA), and was a chair of Grandmothers for the Release of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Civil rights
Clark was a student at Tougaloo College, an historically black college in Tougaloo, Mississippi, when she became involved with the civil rights movement. An activist with the NAACP, she was involved with voter registration efforts.[4] Under the guidance of Medgar Evers and John Salter, Clark founded the NAACP Youth Council in North Jackson, Mississippi.[5]
While working with the NAACP, she became special assistant to Medgar Evers, field secretary for the NAACP. In 1962 Clark resigned from the NAACP and joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to do voter registration work alongside her then husband, Bernard Lafayette, in Alabama. This project laid essential groundwork for the Selma voting rights campaign of 1965. She was eventually named executive secretary of SNCC.[5] She also participated in street demonstrations and experienced police brutality in the Birmingham campaign of 1963.
In 1964, she helped found the Southern Organizing Committee at Fisk University.[6] She was an organizer in the Black Power movement, including the Republic of New Afrika.[7] By early 1973, she returned to Mississippi and worked on a number of other projects including the editorship of the Jackson Advocate.[6]
Clark was critical of the way in which the civil rights movement was portrayed in popular media, particularly in the film Selma, arguing it belittles student activism and does nothing to address the legacy of inequality. She was a vocal supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, seeing it (along with the Black Power movement) as a successor to the civil rights movement.[8]
Green Party
Clark was co-chair of the New York delegation to the Green Party of the United States presidential nominating convention, where Cynthia McKinney was nominated as the Green Party presidential candidate. In her final years Clark focused on writing, activism and advocacy about Haiti.
Education
Clark attended Tougaloo College and earned a M.A. from Albany State University in Albany, GA, where she later worked as a professor. She was also a professor at SUNY Albany, Albany, NY [5]
Personal life and death
Clark died on November 4, 2022, at the age of 82.[9][10]
References
- ^ "Lesser-known candidates in U.S. Senate race". Newsday. October 27, 2012. Retrieved 29 December 2012.
- ^ Campbell, Colin (April 18, 2012). "Green Party Candidates File for Many New York Congressional Races". Retrieved April 30, 2012.
- ^ "Green Party Biography of Colia Clark". Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved April 30, 2012.
- ^ "Clark, Colia Liddell". Civil Rights Digital Library. Retrieved 29 December 2012.
- ^ a b c Rosche, Jedd (February 7, 2006). "Civil rights leader to talk today". The Maneater. Retrieved 29 December 2012.
- ^ a b "Colia Liddell Lafayette Clark" Civil Rights Movement Archive website
- ^ Dan Berger "The Malcolm X Doctrine: The Republic of New Afrika and National Liberation on U.S. Soil" in New World Coming: The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness
- ^ Anthony Palmer "Interview with Colia LaFayette Clark: We Have to Finish the March of the Civil Rights Movement!" Socialist Organizer, March 3, 2015 Archived April 2, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "A Civil Rights Warrior of the 1960s: The Legacy of Colia Lafayette Clark". KPFA. 10 November 2022. Retrieved 27 November 2022.
- ^ "Colia Clark Presente!". Black Agenda Report. 16 November 2022. Retrieved 27 November 2022.
External links
- SNCC Digital Gateway: Colia Liddell Lafayette, Documentary website created by the SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University, telling the story of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee & grassroots organizing from the inside-out
- Campaign web site
- Civil Rights Movement Archive website
- v
- t
- e
(timeline)
groups
- Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
- Atlanta Student Movement
- Black Panther Party
- Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
- Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
- Committee for Freedom Now
- Committee on Appeal for Human Rights
- Council for United Civil Rights Leadership
- Council of Federated Organizations
- Dallas County Voters League
- Deacons for Defense and Justice
- Georgia Council on Human Relations
- Highlander Folk School
- Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
- Lowndes County Freedom Organization
- Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
- Montgomery Improvement Association
- NAACP
- Nashville Student Movement
- Nation of Islam
- Northern Student Movement
- National Council of Negro Women
- National Urban League
- Operation Breadbasket
- Regional Council of Negro Leadership
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
- Southern Regional Council
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
- The Freedom Singers
- United Auto Workers (UAW)
- Wednesdays in Mississippi
- Women's Political Council
- Ralph Abernathy
- Victoria Gray Adams
- Zev Aelony
- Mathew Ahmann
- Muhammad Ali
- William G. Anderson
- Gwendolyn Armstrong
- Arnold Aronson
- Ella Baker
- James Baldwin
- Marion Barry
- Daisy Bates
- Harry Belafonte
- James Bevel
- Claude Black
- Gloria Blackwell
- Randolph Blackwell
- Unita Blackwell
- Ezell Blair Jr.
- Joanne Bland
- Julian Bond
- Joseph E. Boone
- William Holmes Borders
- Amelia Boynton
- Bruce Boynton
- Raylawni Branch
- Stanley Branche
- Ruby Bridges
- Aurelia Browder
- H. Rap Brown
- Ralph Bunche
- Guy Carawan
- Stokely Carmichael
- Johnnie Carr
- James Chaney
- J. L. Chestnut
- Shirley Chisholm
- Colia Lafayette Clark
- Ramsey Clark
- Septima Clark
- Xernona Clayton
- Eldridge Cleaver
- Kathleen Cleaver
- Charles E. Cobb Jr.
- Annie Lee Cooper
- Dorothy Cotton
- Claudette Colvin
- Vernon Dahmer
- Jonathan Daniels
- Abraham Lincoln Davis
- Angela Davis
- Joseph DeLaine
- Dave Dennis
- Annie Devine
- Patricia Stephens Due
- Joseph Ellwanger
- Charles Evers
- Medgar Evers
- Myrlie Evers-Williams
- Chuck Fager
- James Farmer
- Walter Fauntroy
- James Forman
- Marie Foster
- Golden Frinks
- Andrew Goodman
- Robert Graetz
- Fred Gray
- Jack Greenberg
- Dick Gregory
- Lawrence Guyot
- Prathia Hall
- Fannie Lou Hamer
- Fred Hampton
- William E. Harbour
- Vincent Harding
- Dorothy Height
- Audrey Faye Hendricks
- Lola Hendricks
- Aaron Henry
- Oliver Hill
- Donald L. Hollowell
- James Hood
- Myles Horton
- Zilphia Horton
- T. R. M. Howard
- Ruby Hurley
- Cecil Ivory
- Jesse Jackson
- Jimmie Lee Jackson
- Richie Jean Jackson
- T. J. Jemison
- Esau Jenkins
- Barbara Rose Johns
- Vernon Johns
- Frank Minis Johnson
- Clarence Jones
- J. Charles Jones
- Matthew Jones
- Vernon Jordan
- Tom Kahn
- Clyde Kennard
- A. D. King
- C.B. King
- Coretta Scott King
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Martin Luther King Sr.
- Bernard Lafayette
- James Lawson
- Bernard Lee
- Sanford R. Leigh
- Jim Letherer
- Stanley Levison
- John Lewis
- Viola Liuzzo
- Z. Alexander Looby
- Joseph Lowery
- Clara Luper
- Danny Lyon
- Malcolm X
- Mae Mallory
- Vivian Malone
- Bob Mants
- Thurgood Marshall
- Benjamin Mays
- Franklin McCain
- Charles McDew
- Ralph McGill
- Floyd McKissick
- Joseph McNeil
- James Meredith
- William Ming
- Jack Minnis
- Amzie Moore
- Cecil B. Moore
- Douglas E. Moore
- Harriette Moore
- Harry T. Moore
- Queen Mother Moore
- William Lewis Moore
- Irene Morgan
- Bob Moses
- William Moyer
- Elijah Muhammad
- Diane Nash
- Charles Neblett
- Huey P. Newton
- Edgar Nixon
- Jack O'Dell
- James Orange
- Rosa Parks
- James Peck
- Charles Person
- Homer Plessy
- Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
- Fay Bellamy Powell
- Rodney N. Powell
- Al Raby
- Lincoln Ragsdale
- A. Philip Randolph
- George Raymond
- George Raymond Jr.
- Bernice Johnson Reagon
- Cordell Reagon
- James Reeb
- Frederick D. Reese
- Walter Reuther
- Gloria Richardson
- David Richmond
- Bernice Robinson
- Jo Ann Robinson
- Angela Russell
- Bayard Rustin
- Bernie Sanders
- Michael Schwerner
- Bobby Seale
- Cleveland Sellers
- Charles Sherrod
- Alexander D. Shimkin
- Fred Shuttlesworth
- Modjeska Monteith Simkins
- Glenn E. Smiley
- A. Maceo Smith
- Kelly Miller Smith
- Mary Louise Smith
- Maxine Smith
- Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson
- Charles Kenzie Steele
- Hank Thomas
- Dorothy Tillman
- A. P. Tureaud
- Hartman Turnbow
- Albert Turner
- C. T. Vivian
- Wyatt Tee Walker
- Hollis Watkins
- Walter Francis White
- Roy Wilkins
- Hosea Williams
- Kale Williams
- Robert F. Williams
- Andrew Young
- Whitney Young
- Sammy Younge Jr.
- Bob Zellner
- James Zwerg
songs
- "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round"
- "If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus"
- "Kumbaya"
- "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize"
- "Oh, Freedom"
- "This Little Light of Mine"
- "We Shall Not Be Moved"
- "We Shall Overcome"
- "Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed On Freedom)"
- Jim Crow laws
- Lynching in the United States
- Plessy v. Ferguson
- Buchanan v. Warley
- Hocutt v. Wilson
- Sweatt v. Painter
- Hernandez v. Texas
- Loving v. Virginia
- African-American women in the movement
- Jews in the civil rights movement
- Fifth Circuit Four
- 16th Street Baptist Church
- Kelly Ingram Park
- A.G. Gaston Motel
- Bethel Baptist Church
- Brown Chapel
- Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
- Holt Street Baptist Church
- Edmund Pettus Bridge
- March on Washington Movement
- African-American churches attacked
- List of lynching victims in the United States
- Freedom Schools
- Freedom songs
- Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam
- "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence"
- Voter Education Project
- 1960s counterculture
- African American founding fathers of the United States
- Eyes on the Prize
- In popular culture
- Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
- Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument
- Civil Rights Memorial
- Civil Rights Movement Archive
- Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument
- Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument
- Freedom Rides Museum
- Freedom Riders National Monument
- King Center for Nonviolent Social Change
- Martin Luther King Jr. Day
- Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
- Mississippi Civil Rights Museum
- National Civil Rights Museum
- National Voting Rights Museum
- St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Monument
historians