Uncrowned Community Builders

At the time of his death, at the age of 109, Otis Clark was the oldest living survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. He was just 18 years old when the Riot occurred. A minister for more than 85 years, Mr. Clark spent the last few years as a bishop of Life Enrichment Ministries, an organization he co-founded with his daughter, Gwyn Williams.

Otis Clark was born in 1903, in Meridian in what was then Indian Territory. The Territory gained statehood in 1907 as the state of Oklahoma. Clark grew up in Tulsa during the racial segregation era. He lived on the Greenwood side of town with his mother, grandmother and grandfather, who was part Indian. Tulsa was a wealthy oil city and GreenwoodÃ?¢ââ??¬ââ??¢s black community prospered. Black Wallstreet, as it has come to known, had a busy main street with a theater, newspaper, hotel and many other black-owned businesses.
The Race Riot, the worst riot in United States' history began on May 31, 1921. It resulted in the deaths of countless Black residents of Tulsa's Greenwood district and hundreds of homes and businesses that were burned to the ground. Otis Clark remembered that day. He said that he was trying to help victims that had been shot into a vehicle when bullets started being fired his way and he had to run for his life. The ClarkÃ?¢ââ??¬ââ??¢s home was among those destroyed in the Riot. ClarkÃ?¢ââ??¬ââ??¢s stepfather was missing following the destruction and Clark said he never saw him again and presumed that he died in the Riot.

Clark fled Oklahoma with just the clothes on his back. He hopped a train and ended up in Los Angeles in search of his biological father, whom he found. Actor Stepin Fetchit was among the people he met and befriended there. He also met Clark Gable, Charley Chaplin and worked as a butler for Joan Crawford, while selling "corn whiskey" he learned to make as a youngster in Oklahoma.

During the Prohibition Era Clark was thrown in jail where the Salvation Army converted him to Christianity. Clark then got married and became a preacher and traveling evangelist. Clark traveled the United States and the world on behalf of the Church of Christ and was officially ordained minister in 1946.

Clark was an activist, working with other survivors and family members, seeking reparations for losses incurred from the Race Riot. In 2008, he and other race riot survivors assembled in Tulsa for the premiere of "Before They Die", a documentary film about the riot and the survivorsÃ?¢ââ??¬ââ??¢ ongoing struggle for reparations. Reginald Turner, CEO of Mportant Films and Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a Harvard law produced the documentary as part of the Tulsa Project, a nonprofit foundation to raise awareness and seek justice for its survivors.

Bishop Clark lived in Seattle, Washington with his daughter, Dr. Gwen Williams and granddaughter, Pastor Star Williams.