By Ferrari Shakespeare
When Alyce Clarke, now 85, was a little girl growing up in Yazoo City, Miss., women still needed their husband’s signature to have a credit card. There were also no female legislators, and the Mississippi Legislature was debating whether men should be paid more than women for performing the same work.
When she got out of high school, Clarke became a teacher and spent 37 years in the classroom. After being elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1985, she departed the field of education, but her legislation continued to have an impact on public schools.
While working as a representative, Clarke experienced a lot of mistreatment and racism. After Clarke had spent four years in the Capitol, the Mississippi Gulf Coast elected Diane Peranich. After Peranich’s election, then-House Speaker C.B. “Buddie” Newman sent Peranich her own key to the bathroom—a perk that Clarke had never received.
“I was there for four years, and they never gave me a key, and all the years I had been there, the door was always locked. They had a bathroom for white women that I never knew about,” Clarke recalled in an interview in her Jackson home with the Youth Media Project. “I called the media and told them about what I learned.”
The next day, Newman had a key to the bathroom sent to Clarke. She told the security person who delivered the key that she didn’t need it, and he relayed the message to the speaker. When she responded to a later summons for a meeting with Newman, he asked her why she wouldn’t accept the key.
“Mr. Speaker, I haven’t had it all this time. I don’t need it now,” Clarke told him. Newman then pressed Clarke to take the key, assuring her that they would create a women’s bathroom as a result of her advocacy. The speaker also promised her an important chairmanship of a committee in the Mississippi House of Representatives.
Clarke emphasized in her YMP interview that it was necessary for her to be strong with men to overcome barriers and get what she wanted and needed. “As women, we always have a lot of things that come to us, and men feel like they can have the control and right to tell us what to do with our body,” she said. “But as women, we have a stronger voice than men.”
Using her voice early meant that Clarke would use her position to help Mississippians, including making significant contributions to rehabilitation programs in Mississippi, particularly focusing on substance abuse. As the first Black woman to be elected to the Mississippi Legislature she established the Born Free program, a treatment center for pregnant women struggling with addiction. This aimed to ensure the health of both mothers and unborn children by providing essential support.
In 1990, Clarke played a pivotal role in creating Mississippi’s first drug court, which offered alternatives to incarceration for drug-related offenses. She describes this experience as a “chance for individuals to turn their life around. “These courts prioritize rehabilitation through supervision, drug testing and treatment service to help reduce recidivism rates.
“I wanted to ensure that the voice of these often overlooked people was heard,” she told YMP in July 2024.
Fighting for Equal Pay and Reproductive Rights
But she never gave up her fight to increase power and autonomy for Mississippi’s women. Throughout her long career, Clarke advocated tirelessly for education, women’s rights and health care, championing legislation to establish the Mississippi Women’s Commission, and fighting for equal pay and reproductive rights. “Every time the abortion bill comes up, I vote for it because women can’t get men pregnant,” Clarke says of her advocacy work.
Clarke would like to see this strong voice more at work in the Mississippi Legislature, saying, “There are 122 people in the Legislature, and there are less than 25 women.’’
Currently, the Mississippi House of Representatives has 122 members, but only 15 are women. There are only nine women serving in the Mississippi Senate out of total 52 members. This stark contrast illustrates a significant gap in representation, which Clarke says could be addressed through increased advocacy and support for women through politics.
Clarke believes that the lower number of female legislators in Mississippi could be changed—if voters’ mindsets change.“I think a lot of women don’t vote for women legislators because they are scared of others’ opinions and don’t have enough encouragement,’’ Clarke says.
This apprehension often stems from deeply ingrained social norms that suggest women should not aspire to leadership roles. Clarke wants women of all ages to create an environment for women to feel empowered to support one or another. Successful female politicians can inspire the next generation; when women see other women in positions of power and decision-making, it shatters the illusion that they don’t belong there.
Clarke hopes to spread more awareness and encouragement for young women and encourage them to fight for what they believe or want to do. No matter what men think.
