DES MOINES, Iowa – The story of Alexander Clark has flown just below the radar, largely remaining hidden from the view of most Iowa history buffs.

But a group of dedicated Iowans are calling attention to Clark’s story in the hope that history will remember him as a champion of civil rights and equality almost a hundred years before “I have a dream.”

Clark, a black man from Muscatine, argued successfully before the Iowa Supreme Court without a law degree so his daughter could attend public schools in Muscatine in 1868. He later earned a law degree from the University of Iowa and became the U.S. ambassador to Liberia.

It sounds like a story ready for the Hollywood treatment, and Abraham Funchess Jr., director of the Iowa Commission on the Status of African Americans and a minister at Jubilee United Methodist Church in Waterloo, wants to put Clark’s life on the silver screen.

Such a film would help cement Clark’s place as a major civil rights figure in Iowa and U.S. history, Funchess said.

“We’d love to see this story get put into books and publications here in

Iowa,” he said. “We want to get it to be part of the educational curriculum. A lot of people in Iowa don’t even know about this Iowa hero. He should be coming to the tips of tongues just as readily as a Martin Luther King Jr. or Frederick Douglas.”

Joseph Cassis, deputy director of the Iowa Communications Network, has penned a script based on Clark’s life, and Cassis and Funchess are now trying to finance the production of a major motion picture.

Cassis said he’s set his sights on having a film ready for release by the Fourth of July in 2010.

Cassis said gaps in the historical record of Clark’s life have forced him to speculate on some of Clark’s biography.

For instance, Cassis’ script depicts a meeting between Clark and famed American author Mark Twain, a meeting that Cassis can’t prove took place but may have happened because both men share connections to Muscatine and the riverboat industry.

“There’s no way to identify some of the gaps that exist between one point and another because we don’t have a rolling camera from the day he was born to the day he died. I’ve tried to depict a man truthfully and honestly through his good works,” Cassis said.

But those gaps in the historical record make a documentary film a more fitting medium to tell Clark’s story, said Kent Sissel, a Muscatine man who has researched Clark for years.

Sissel, who lives in Clark’s former home, said too little is known about much of Clark’s life to be accurately portrayed in a film.

“Are you trying to write a novel or are you trying to portray real history? If you want to portray real history, you need to do a documentary,” he said.

Funchess said he’d also like a documentary made to chronicle Clark’s life, but he said a major motion picture would make a bigger splash with the public and do more to elevate Clark’s status as a civil rights pioneer.

But no matter the medium, he said Clark’s story needs to be told to remind the world of Iowa’s contributions to civil rights.

“I don’t know how you could keep the lid on this guy,” he said.

Fred Love can be reached at (515) 422-9048 or fred.love@lee.net.

On Sunday, Feb. 22, Muscatine Mayor Richard O’Brien will read a proclamation of Alexander G. Clark Week during a free public program celebrating Muscatine’s place in black history in the music room of the Musser Museum at Muscatine Art Center, 1314 Mulberry Ave. For more information on Sunday’s event, see page 1C of today’s Muscatine Journal

Proclamation

Alexander G. Clark Week

WHEREAS, Alexander G. Clark was born in 1826 in Washington County, Pennsylvania. In 1842 he joined other Washington County residents in Bloomington, Iowa, now Muscatine, and made it his home for a half century. In his lifetime, he was a barber, an investor, an entrepreneur, an educator, a soldier, a politician, an attorney, a newspaper publisher, a statesman and U.S. ambassador to Liberia; and

WHEREAS, Clark was founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church of Muscatine and founder of Prince Hall Masonry throughout the Midwest. He became known as the “Colored Orator of the West,” and the oration at his funeral declared him “one of the underground railroad engineers and conductors, whose field was the South, whose depot was the North, and whose freight was human souls.” Alexander G. Clark was buried in 1891 at Greenwood Cemetery in Muscatine; and

WHEREAS, Alexander G. Clark was a pioneer in humanitarian and social-justice issues in Muscatine, Iowa; and

WHEREAS, Alexander G. Clark and his associates, white and Black, advanced the interests of all people in establishing legal recognition for equal rights in the State of Iowa; and

WHEREAS, Alexander G. Clark traveled the country speaking for a diverse and egalitarian future for the United States of America; and

WHEREAS, Alexander G. Clark accepted appointment and served his country as Minister and Consul-General to the Black free state of Liberia (the capital Monrovia named for President Monroe and Liberia for liberty); and

WHEREAS, February 25, 2009, is the 183rd anniversary of the birth of this equal-rights pioneer.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Richard W. O’Brien, Mayor of the City of Muscatine, Iowa, do hereby proclaim the week of February 22-28, 2009 as Alexander G. Clark Week in the City of Muscatine, Iowa.

IN WITNESS THEREOF, I have hereunto subscribed my name to be affixed this 5th day of February, 2009.