Wilkie Clark's Daughter

by Charlotte A. Clark-Frieson  aka "Wilkie Clark's Daughter"
Charlotte A. Clark-Frieson
Charlotte A. Clark-Frieson
  • "Wilkie Clark's Daughter"
    		•
    The Clark Historic Landmark Site
    "Torchbearers Of Civil Rights History"
    252 Lafayette Highway | Roanoke, AL  36274
    (334) 863-4885
    The Clark Memorial Foundation's Mission and Vision
    clark_memorial_foundation_mission___vision.pdf
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    ​I am Wilkie Clark’s Daughter — but more than that, I am my mother’s promise kept.

    I was born in Roanoke, Alabama, a little Black girl growing up in a world that tried every day to tell people like us to stay small, stay silent, stay forgotten. But my father, Wilkie Clark, and my mother, Hattie Lee Peters Clark, refused to shrink.

    Daddy wasn’t what people expected a Black man in the deep South to be: he owned his land, he built his business with his own two hands, and he kept his money moving through Black hands when the world tried to lock us out. He had the guts — the grit and backbone — to do what others whispered about but rarely dared.

    Mama was the teacher — the one with the books, the degrees, the lessons. But she was more than that: she was my father’s constant, his counsel, the quiet strategist who understood that behind every bold man, there is a woman steadying the ground beneath his feet. She taught children by day — and stood by my father’s side by night, making sure what they built would stand.

    Before she left this world, my mother pulled me close. She looked me in my eyes and made me promise her one thing: “Don’t you ever let them forget your father — who he was, and what he did.”

    That promise is the reason the Clark Historic Landmark Site even exists today. It stands because they stood. It stands because I stood — and I am still standing.

    For 36 years, I have kept that promise — gathering deeds, letters, yellowed papers, photos, news clippings — piecing together a legacy too important to lose. I have spoken his name in rooms that didn’t want to hear it. I have told my mother’s story right alongside his, because without her, none of this would have held together.
    ​
    Now, at 71 years old, I am still fighting. This ground is here because I would not give up — but there is still so much work to do. There are still truths to preserve, documents to protect, young people to teach who we were so they know who they are.

    And as long as God gives me strength — as long as there is breath in my body — I will stand watch over this promise. I will tell it, protect it, and pass it on, until the day I lay down and fall asleep for eternity.
    ​
    Learn More About The Wilkie Clark Memorial Foundation
    Established in 2004 by Charlotte A. Clark-Frieson
    I am Wilkie Clark’s Daughter,
    my mother’s promise made flesh and bone.
    I stand as keeper of this TRUTH --
    and I am not yet done.
    "Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again" (Psalm 85:11)
    "The Battlefield" by William Cullen Bryant
    Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Selma To Montgomery March, March 25, 1965