Amanda Virginia Thomas Clark (January 1869–26 May 1952), educator and civic leader, was born in Smithfield. Her parents, George Washington Thomas, a lighthouse keeper, and Adeline Boykin Thomas, both had been born into slavery, but they achieved a measure of economic success after the Civil War and instilled in their six children a strong desire for education. At age thirteen Amanda Thomas entered the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (later Virginia State University). After receiving a teaching certificate from the normal department in 1887, she taught for three years in Isle of Wight County public schools. During the 1890–1891 academic year Thomas instructed elementary students at the Twenty-second Street Public School in the booming shipbuilding town of Newport News. She held lessons for several grades in an upstairs room of the principal's house.

Thomas returned to Smithfield in 1891 and there on 27 April 1892 married Norris Berkley Clark, a native of Alexandria and graduate of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later Hampton University). The following year they moved to Newport News, where he became a respected attorney, educator, business leader, civic activist, and the first African American member of the city school board. She returned to teaching at the Twenty-second Street Public School, but in 1896, soon after Newport News incorporated as a city, the school board ruled that only single women could teach in the public schools. Consequently, from 1897 until 1911 Clark concentrated on her family. She had five sons, two daughters, and two other children who died young; she also raised one foster son. Clark became involved in numerous educational and civic organizations. She persuaded the city to increase the number of schools for African American children, improve streets around those schools, and incorporate vocational training into the public school programs for African Americans.

After the school board changed its rule in 1911 and again allowed married women to teach, Clark returned to the classroom and taught at John Marshall School, an elementary school for Black children that at its opening in 1899 was the first school for the city's African American elementary students. Clark taught at John Marshall until she retired in 1941. In the meantime she continued with her own education. Completing summer courses at Hampton and extension courses at Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute, Clark received a second teaching certificate from her alma mater in August 1924 and a B.S. in elementary education in 1933, one year after her youngest surviving child graduated from the same college.

Her own experience made Clark keenly aware of the importance of parental involvement in the education of children, and with financial assistance from the wife of the owner of the Newport News shipyard, she organized the Mothers' Clubs, from which the Parent-Teacher Association emerged. In 1918 she and seven other women organized the Women's Leisure Hour Club to encourage middle-class African American women in the constructive use of their leisure time through civic, religious, and social activity. Using the motto "Through Leisure to Deeper Culture," the club organized programs of panel discussions, speakers, book reviews, and self-improvement efforts.

Imbued with a tradition of service, Clark was a committed community leader and assisted in founding organizations throughout the broader Hampton Roads area. She was a member of the Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, which formed a Hampton chapter in 1908. An alliance of several women's groups, the federation attracted women primarily from the middle and educated classes who had some financial resources and leisure time to devote to community service. At a meeting of the Hampton chapter in Clark's home, members made plans to create a school for wayward girls. Initially named the Industrial Home School for Colored Girls and later the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls, it opened in Hanover County in 1915 under the direction of Clark's friend and fellow chapter member, Janie Porter Barrett. Clark, Barrett, and other members also established a chapter of the Negro Organization Society, which helped coordinate the work of several groups interested in improving health, schools, and neighborhoods and in addressing civic concerns of African Americans in Virginia. Clark also became a charter member of other service organizations, such as the local chapter of the United Order of Tents.

Clark and her husband were active members of Saint Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church in Newport News. She organized the church's first choir, and he served as the church clerk and chaired the trustee and steward boards. Devoted to music, she was the organist at Saint Paul A.M.E. Church, A.M.E. Zion Church, and the Presbyterian Church. Clark's husband died on 29 July 1940. After an extended illness that confined her to her home for several years, Amanda Virginia Thomas Clark died on 26 May 1952 at Whittaker Memorial Hospital in Newport News. She was buried in Holly Grove Cemetery in Hampton following a well-attended funeral service.

Sources Consulted:
Biography (with variant birth year of 1872) in Virginia Iota State Organization of Delta Kappa Gamma Society, Adventures in Teaching: Pioneer Women Educators and Influential Teachers (1963), 160–163; variant birth date of 16 Jan. 1875 provided by BVS; United States Census Schedules, Census, Isle of Wight Co., 1880 (age eleven on 4 June 1880), Warwick Co., 1900 (birth date of Jan. 1869), 1910 (age forty on 27 Apr. 1910), 1920 (age forty-seven on 19 Jan. 1920), 1930 (age fifty-five on 16 Apr. 1930), Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; Isle of Wight Co. Marriage Register (age twenty-three on 27 Apr. 1892); Virginia State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, Inc., History of the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, Inc. (1996), 87; husband's obituaries in Newport News Daily Press and Newport News Times-Herald, both 31 July 1940, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, 3 Aug. 1940; obituaries in Newport News Times-Herald, 28 May 1952, Newport News Daily Press, 29 May 1952, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, 7 June 1952 (portrait).

Photograph in Newport News Star, 3 Sept. 1931.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander.

How to cite this page:
Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander, "Amanda Virginia Thomas Clark (1869–1952)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2006 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Clark_Amanda, accessed [today's date]).

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