This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal on February 7, 2024.
For the second year since becoming an official state holiday, February 1 was George Washington Carver Day. What better kickoff for Black History Month every year?
I attended the Carver Day celebration at Iowa State University, in the same Memorial Union Great Hall where, as a 9-year-old boy, I saw Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1960.
You can watch the entire event online. It runs most of two hours, and I heartily recommend it. The program starts 17 minutes into the video.
If you watch nothing else, don’t miss the brilliant performance by Paxton Williams as Carver himself; a program he has presented over 400 times. If you don’t know the Carver story, here’s an easy and entertaining way to learn. (Starts at 32:44.)
Another favorite segment for me is opera great Simon Estes and Ambassador Kenneth Quinn recounting the campaign for the holiday which grew from their call for honoring Carver in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.
From their guest column in the Des Moines Register, June 21, 2020:
At this critical moment in our nation’s history, we urge that the Iowa Legislature pass a resolution to place a statue of George Washington Carver in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. In doing so, lawmakers should state that the inspiration for the timing for this action is to respond to the pain still so intensely felt by such a large part of our population that is affected by the racism that still afflicts our country more than 150 years after George Washington Carver came to Iowa.
While there’s no statue yet, the timing was right for the bill creating the holiday, adopted unanimously by both houses and signed by Governor Kim Reynolds less than two years later.
The Estes-Quinn duo hailed the success on behalf of “more than 100 distinguished Iowans and Iowa institutions” that had endorsed the effort.
Des Moines Register, June 19, 2022: “We served as the co-leaders of a Carver recognition initiative that made this moment possible. … We are deeply gratified that this action…will provide a much-needed opportunity for Iowans to come together each February, while also ensuring that Carver’s inspiring story and historic legacy will be highlighted for future generations.”
* * *
Muscatine Journal, June 16, 2004: “Berneice Williams, the oldest living black woman in Muscatine, remembers when scientist and inventor George Washington Carver stayed at her home sometime in the 1920s.”
* * *
Alexander Clark Day, every February 25, is Muscatine’s Black History Month celebration opportunity, thanks to a City Council resolution in 2018.
This month’s featured program for the Alexander Clark cultural series (at least one event annually since 2012) will be Tuesday, Feb. 27, 6 p.m. at Muscatine Community College. “Squatters on Red Earth,” a new play by Mary Swander, explores the relationship between the Meskwaki people and the communal society that founded the Amana Colonies.
The 27th is also a 10 a.m. ribbon-cutting event at the African American Museum of Iowa in Cedar Rapids. Attenders from across the state are welcomed.
Closed since 2022 for a $5 million renovation necessitated by flood-control work, the project is almost complete, and the museum anticipates reopening in early April.
The Gazette, December 11, 2022, quoted LaNisha Cassell, executive director: “No area will be untouched by the project. From new ceilings, lighting, carpet and wall color, to upgrades in our Aldeen Davis Celebration Hall, restrooms, and kitchen, everything will look and feel refreshed.”
Cassell in The Gazette, (December 31, 2023): “The African American Museum is an Iowa treasure and has been a voice for the voiceless for more than 30 years. It leads the effort to tear down the walls that confine us to a limited history. … The continuing need for inclusive and authentic history is why the [museum] was founded and why it is necessary for all Iowans today and tomorrow.”
Among major donors she mentions the Muscatine-based Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust. Kirk Thompson of Muscatine is a current museum board member.
The current building opened in 2003 but was heavily damaged by flooding in 2008.
The Gazette, December 19, 2000: “Officials of the museum, which will be built in Cedar Rapids, disclosed at a public ceremony in Muscatine that philanthropists Richard and Mary Jo Stanley of Muscatine were donating $200,000 to the project. Thanks to the Stanleys’ pledge, the center’s future Celebration Hall will be named for Aldeen Davis, a longtime Muscatine community activist, teacher, library board member and newspaper columnist. Davis died last August at age 84.”
“For 15 years, Davis wrote the ‘Soul Food for Thought’ column in the Muscatine Journal. She also was instrumental in preserving the home of Alexander Clark, an African-American resident of Muscatine who successfully argued in 1867 in the Iowa Supreme Court that his daughter should be allowed to attend the white public school.”
Next time: We are what we celebrate