HOLMESCOUNTY, Miss.–You will have a chance to pay respects to Robert Clark, Jr., former state representative and speaker pro tempore of the Mississippi House, who died Tuesday at age 96 at his home in Holmes County.
Clark will lie in repose at the Mississippi State Capitol Building Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.
“I created a motto for myself: fighting, pulling and working together for a better Mississippi,” said Clark, of his election to the Mississippi House in 1967, when he was honored in 2018, by the Mississippi Center for Justice.
Clark was the first Black person in Mississippi elected to the legislature since Reconstruction.
“I didn’t get any (ob)struction from any political party at that time because I could not become a member of a political party,” he said. Clark was a Freedom Democrat, a party not recognized by the state, since they were an offshoot of the Democratic Party, to which most state lawmakers belonged at the time.
Clark served in the House for 36 years, focusing on education, and was elected speaker pro tempore in 1992 and held that rank until his retirement in 2003.
