Libby Clark
Elizabeth "Libby" Clark was an African-American journalist whose accomplishments included founding a magazine in Los Angeles, working as a newspaper writer, and forming her own public relations firm.
Early years
A native of Chester, Pennsylvania, Clark was one of at least six children born to Samuel W. Clark and Emily G. Smith.Clark was a graduate of Columbia University.
Career
In 1954, Clark launched FEM magazine, a publication that was directed toward women, with a focus on African Americans. Clark said then that besides being informative for readers, she wanted the publication to make potential advertisers aware of the multi-million-dollar purchasing potential of African American women.Clark wrote for the Chester Times and worked in the West Coast bureau of the Pittsburgh Courier. She later wrote about food and social issues for the Los Angeles Sentinel for 50 years. Her column, "Food For Thought," which injected political awareness into food articles for a grass roots audience, was syndicated in 150 newspapers by Amalgamated Publishers, Inc. From 1989 to 1994, she published "The Plum Book," an annual ‘Who’s Who’ in the Los Angeles/Southern California black community, and distributed it freely to politicians and community leaders as a community resource. She also edited and co-wrote the Black Family Reunion Cookbook, which sold more than 250,000 copies and made best-seller lists in 1991. In 1951, the University of Southern California designated Clark as the journalist who would accompany a group of USC students on a two-month tour of Europe and report on the students' activities.
Clark also applied her journalistic skills to public relations when she became the first African-American with a business license to own a public relations firm, Libby Clark Associates, in California; she went on to operate the firm for 50 years. In 1969, Los Angeles County hired her as the public information officer for the then-new Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital.
One of her public relations associates was screenwriter, Lenny Bruce collaborator, author, photographer, and photojournalist William Karl Thomas, who, in 2011, published a novel titled “Cleo,” based on his ten-year professional association with Miss Libby Clark during the 1950s and 1960s. In it he describes her personal friendships with famous personalities Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, James Baldwin, Tom Bradley, Leo Branton, and others. He also includes excerpts from her 1960 coverage of the Nigerian Independence in Africa with excerpts from her interviews with Golda Meir, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, and Princess Alexandra from England. Thomas’ publisher's website includes a sampling of his photography with photos of Libby Clark.