Press Releases

Jack B. Clarke, Jr. Noted for His Leadership

For Immediate Release: Feb. 14, 2011
Media Contact: Jennifer Bowles • 951.826.8480 • jennifer.bowles@BBKlaw.com

RIVERSIDE, Calif. _  Jack B. Clarke, Jr., an attorney who specializes in education law and public agency litigation at Best Best & Krieger LLP, will be presented with the Omar Stratton Award from the local NAACP branch during a Feb. 24 ceremony honoring community leaders.

Stratton was the first president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Riverside branch, which was established in 1942, according to its current president, Waudieur “Woody” E. Rucker-Hughes. Besides the Riverside area, the chapter today includes Corona, Palm Springs, Jurupa and Moreno Valley.

"I'm touched to receive this special award named for a man who played such a significant role in our community's history," Clarke said of Stratton.

Stratton, who worked for Riverside's Park and Recreation Department, was the son of a former slave who fought for the Union Army in the Civil War. As a community activist, Stratton helped start today's Kansas Avenue Seventh-Day Adventist Church in his living room. After he died in 1972 at age 80, the city gave his name to the Stratton Community Center at Bordwell Park on Riverside's Eastside.

The local branch started after a near-riot erupted during a softball game between African-American soldiers stationed near Riverside and a city team in 1941. The black community, Rucker-Hughes said, was blamed for the incident and community leaders, including Stratton formed the branch. The national office of the NAACP, founded in 1909, granted the Riverside group a charter on Sept. 26, 1942.

The Stratton Award will be one of 16 awards handed out Feb. 24 at the chapter’s annual Freedom Fund Scholarship and Awards Banquet, starting at 5:30 p.m. at the Riverside Convention Center in downtown Riverside. The keynote speaker is Riverside police Chief Sergio Diaz. 

Rucker-Hughes said Clarke is deserving of the award because he, like Stratton, is a key leader in the community who helps others and is passionate about it.

“Jack is absolutely one of those go-to fellows who provides a voice for the community,” she said. “He is not in-your-face, but he is very effective.”

Raised in Riverside, Clarke is perhaps best known in the community for chairing the Mayor’s Use-of-Force Review Panel in 1999 following the police shooting death of Tyisha Miller in Riverside. Stratton said Clarke stepped up to the plate when asked to be on this panel, and several positive changes occurred because of his leadership.

Clarke, whose father was Riverside’s first African-American city councilman, was himself the first African-American to chair the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce.

Currently, Clarke volunteers on the executive board of the Highlander Athletics Association, which is aimed at reviving UC Riverside athletics through community support.

In 2009, Clarke received the Golden “Legal Eagle” Award from the Riverside Opportunity Center, a nonprofit dedicated to feeding, sheltering and helping the region’s poor, for his “outstanding work down through the years in helping and elevating the citizens of our community,” according to the Center.