Virginia Changemakers
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Samuel H. Clark (1885 - 1979)

2022SMW_SamuelHClark.jpg

Locality

Roanoke

Occupation

Labor Leader

Biography

The son of a Montgomery County farmer, Samuel Harris Clark (April 11, 1885−June 25, 1979) attended the local segregated schools before going to work on the railroad about 1904. He was hired as a brakeman by the Norfolk and Western Railway Company in 1913 and worked at the Roanoke yard for more than fifty years. Clark joined the Association of Colored Railway Trainmen and Locomotive Firemen and by the 1930s was president of its local union in Roanoke.

Elected in July 1939 as national president of the association, which later changed its name to the Association of Railway Trainmen and Locomotive Firemen (ART&LF), Clark transformed it from a primarily fraternal association to a union focused on improving the working conditions of African Americans. Despite having only about 1,000 members, the ART&LF joined lawsuits and even funded their own cases to fight discriminatory practices by railroad companies and unions that represented only white trainmen. Following Clark's 1943 testimony about Norfolk and Western's refusal to hire and promote African-American locomotive firemen and trainmen, the national Committee on Fair Employment Practices called for the company and the unions to cease their discrimination, although little changed. Similarly, Supreme Court rulings that upheld the rights of Black railroad employees in two 1944 cases that Clark's union helped instigate did not lead to immediate improvements because the decisions were not enforced.

Clark retired from the railroad in 1955 and the union in 1958. He served as president of the Montgomery County NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), where he emphasized the importance of voter registration. The local NAACP continues to offer scholarships in Clark's memory.


2022 Strong Men & Women in Virginia History honoree, Library of Virginia and Dominion Energy.

File Citation(s)

Photograph courtesy of Donald Shovely.

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