Yvette Diane Clarke (born November 21, 1964) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for New York's 9th congressional district since 2013.

[1][2] She graduated from Edward R. Murrow High School and earned a scholarship to enroll at Oberlin College in Ohio, which she attended from 1982 to 1986.

[3] While studying at Oberlin, she spent a summer interning in the Washington, D.C. office of Representative Major Owens, where she told Roll Call that she worked on legislative issues involving Caribbean-American trade.

[4][5] In August 2006, Crain's New York Business and the Daily News reported that Clarke's Oberlin transcripts indicated that she had not graduated, contrary to what her campaign literature claimed.

[6] Clarke initially said she thought she had earned sufficient credits to graduate from Oberlin, then later said she had completed her degree by attending courses at Medgar Evers College.

Later, she served as an assistant to State Senator Velmanette Montgomery of Brooklyn and Assemblywoman Barbara Clark, of Queens.

[12] She cosponsored City Council resolutions that opposed the war in Iraq, criticized the federal USA PATRIOT Act, and called for a national moratorium on the death penalty.

In April 2007, Clarke was the sole member of Congress to oppose a bill to rename the Ellis Island Library after British-born Bob Hope, saying in a statement, "Bob Hope is a great American and a fantastic human being, [but] I see the museum and all aspects of the island to be greater than any one human being.

She wrote legislation to improve the process of removing the names of individuals who believe they were wrongly identified as a threat when screened against the No Fly List used by the Transportation Security Administration, which passed 413–3 on February 3, 2009.

[15] In November 2009 she was one of 54 members of Congress to sign on to a controversial letter to President Obama, urging him to use diplomatic pressure to resolve the blockade affecting Gaza.

[19] Clarke argued the bill was a good idea because "this monument commemorates not only the sacrifices of soldiers in the Revolutionary War who dedicated themselves to the cause of liberty, but a reminder that even in wartime we must protect basic human rights.

[29][30] In 2010, Clarke signed two petitions urging Obama to pressure Israel to resolve the Gaza Blockade, which she later retracted.

"[39] In 2015, Clarke attended Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu's speech before a joint session of Congress after initially expressing uncertainty.

[54] She has also called for extending the Temporary Protected Status granted to Haitian immigrants seeking refuge after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti,[55] and for the abolition of ICE.

[66] Clarke endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 and cast a vote for her as a superdelegate at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

[68] In 2004, Clarke, then a member of the New York City Council, made her first run for Congress for the 11th district against incumbent Major Owens, for whom she had interned in college.

Clarke was challenged in the Democratic primary by Sylvia Kinard, an attorney and ex-wife of former New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Bill Thompson.

[82] Clarke ran unopposed in the primary and defeated Alan Bellone in the November general election with 92.4% of the vote.