Peter Humphries Clark, Huntsville, AL
Peter Humphries Clark (March 29, 1829-June 21, 1925), an associate of Frederick Douglass, was one of Ohio's most effective black abolitionist writers and speakers.
The first teacher engaged by the Cincinnati black public schools and founder and principal of Ohio's first public high school for black students, he was recognized as the nation's foremost black public school educator.
He was a path-breaking political activist who empowered black voters in Ohio electoral politics, a feat for which he was widely recognized, but which ultimately cost him his job.
Peter was born in Cincinnati, his father Michael Clark a manumitted slave and his mother the mulatto daughter of an indentured servant from Ireland. His large extended family was active in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. In the absence of black public schools, his father—a successful barber—sent him to private schools.
A brilliant student, he served as assistant teacher in the two lower grades of high school while he completed the remaining two. His father paid $200 to apprentice him to a white abolitionist maker of stereotype printing plates. Unfortunately this employer moved to California after two years, leaving Clark unable to find further work at this trade because of the color bar.
After his father, Michael Clark died in 1849, he briefly ran the barber shop, but hated serving white customers and quit.
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Re: Peter Humphries Clark, Huntsville, AL
Stephen Hanks 12/20/11
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Re: Peter Humphries Clark, Huntsville, AL
Stephen Hanks 12/20/11