Early Life

• Clarke was born on the first day of 1915 into a poor family in rural Alabama. His father was a sharecropper in Union Springs and his mother did people's washing. The young John was inspired by his fifth-grade teacher who instilled in him the desire to learn and, in 1933, he defied his father's wish that he become a farmer and traveled to New York by freight train to begin his life of scholarship.
  
  

Academic Beginning

• History, particularly the history of black people, was an abiding interest for Clarke, and he studied both history and literature at New York and Columbia universities. He also indulged his two principal passions by joining groups such as the Harlem History Club and the Harlem Writers' Workshop. This helped him meet historians such as Arturo Schomburg, John Jackson and William Leo Hansberry.
  
  

Professional Career

• Clarke went on to teach at Cornell University and Hunter College in New York, and would go on to write or edit more than 30 books and 50 short stories, and he wrote numerous papers and articles, both for academic consumption and in the mainstream press. He penned a syndicated column for about 50 newspapers in the U.S., in which he reviewed books by black writers. He also lectured widely and presented work to many conferences.
  
  

Legacy

• Clarke's legacy is significant. He was a major influence on many black American civic leaders, and was instrumental in helping a number of prominent writers of African origin to be published, including Cheikh Anta Diop. Hunter College awarded him the Thomas Hunter Professorship in 1983 and he was later made professor emeritus for African World History at the school. The Africana Library at Cornell University has been named in his honor.