[1] In 1960, some 800 independent black landowners held nearly half the land area of Holmes County, an unusual situation in the state, which along with most of the American South had sharecropping as the predominant agricultural system.

After the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he agreed to be a candidate in 1967 of the Freedom Democratic Party (FDP), though he was not a member.

[1] Since the assignment of a federal registrar in the county in November 1965, the FDP registered thousands of black voters for the first time since the disfranchisement of their ancestors in 1890.

Clark was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1967 by the black majority of the county, taking his seat on January 2, 1968.

In 1982, he ran for congress and won the Democratic nomination, but did not receive party support and lost the general election.