Family celebrates Stephon Clark birthday: ‘Happy birthday, son. I wish you were here’

Whether they lit a joint, poured a drink or performed on a makeshift stage, dozens of members from the Sacramento community came together Thursday night to celebrate what should have been Stephon Clark’s 28th birthday.

Over 50 music guests performed rap and hip-hop in the parking lot through the night’s celebration as attendees watched and helped themselves to plates of food. All who celebrated were friends, family and allies of the movement created to preserve Clark’s legacy.

Clark was killed March 18, 2018, when he was shot by police who believed the phone he held in his hand as he stood in his grandmother’s backyard to be a gun. Clark was one of the 400 remembered Black men and women who were killed at the hands of police, their pictures and names lining the walls of Stephon’s House during the family’s life celebration.

Stevante Clark, his younger brother, founded the I Am SAC Foundation in 2020 to preserve and honor Stephon’s memory. This grassroots organization is a social justice movement that quarters in Stephon’s House, 5940 Rosebud Lane, and acts as a local resource museum library center.

“We don’t need to be political, we don’t need to be religious,” Stevante Clark said. “We understand, like the rest of everybody in this building knows, that Stephon and all the names on this wall should be alive today.”

During the celebration, a paper taped to a door of a room’s in Stephon’s House read “The Clark Family.” Stevante, his siblings and their mother, Sequette Clark, known by loved ones as “Mama Clark,” gathered in this room and cheered to Stephon’s memory. Pictures decorated the walls, all taken during movements and protests after his death.

“I am Stephon Clark, I am Mama Clark,” the mother said. “Happy birthday, son. I wish you were here.”