JoAnn Clark introduces Black kids to Black colleges. Her impact will be honored Saturday at Harding High School.

Mary Divine, Pioneer Press
Updated ·11 min read

JoAnn Clark’s mission is to introduce Minnesota students of color to historically Black colleges and universities.

Once the students – more than 1,000 since 2004 – tour HBCUs, Clark’s work is practically done, she said.

“It’s the window-and-mirror effect,” she said. “Once they can picture themselves on campus, once they can see themselves there, they’ll do whatever it takes to get there.”

“PROCEED HBCU,” an annual week-long tour of HBCUs, takes place in October over the MEA break. Students must apply to the program, interview in person, attend workshops and a college fair before the tour and commit to six hours of volunteer work, she said.

The 80 students selected to attend the tour each year visit predominantly Black campuses throughout the South and on the East Coast; each tour generally visits six HBCUs, she said.

Clark also is co-chair of the Thinking Career and College Early Fair, which takes place each year at Harding High School in St. Paul. The fair – a requirement for any student applying to take part in the PROCEED HBCU tour program – is held in partnership with Achieve, PROCEED HBCU and St. Paul Public Schools.

PROCEED stands for Progressive Center for Education and Economic Development. It is billed as a way to help students from grades 6 through 12 “understand and get excited about their options after high school – and to develop the skills to thrive in their communities as adolescents and adults.”

The fair, which will be held Saturday, includes representatives from universities, four-year colleges, two-year colleges, trade schools, the military services, police departments, fire departments and other community agencies. Among the HBCUs taking part in the college fair this weekend: Spelman College, Tennessee State University, Fisk University, Howard University, Hampton University, Morehouse University and Florida A&M University.

“I don’t care where they go to school as long as they don’t end up in an orange jumpsuit,” Clark said. “People give up on our Black kids, but we cannot give up on Black kids.”

Most of the tour participants have been Black, and about 60 percent have come from St. Paul. About half of the participants end up going to an HBCU; 80 percent go on to higher education, she said.

Clark works to raise money — more than $1.2 million to date — to offset the cost of the tours. Each tour costs about $1,000 to $1,300 per student; students are asked to pay between $500 and $900, she said. Clark also raises money for scholarships to help students attend the school of their choice; the JoAnn Clark Scholarship Fund has raised $20,000 in the past four years.

Clark jokes that she will ask anyone for money to help support the HBCU tour, even strangers walking down the street.

“I met one guy, he was a school board member, out one day, and I said, ‘I noticed you didn’t donate,’” she said. “He said, ‘Oh, I meant to send you a check.’ I said, ‘Well, how much do you have on you?’ He said, ‘I only have $25 in my wallet.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ll take that.’”

Auditorium honor

Clark, who has three children and five grandchildren, is a longtime Harding High School parent volunteer. She served as PTSA president and was an AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) tutor.

On Saturday, during the Thinking Career and College Early Fair, the auditorium at Harding High School will be renamed the “JoAnn Clark Auditorium” in honor of her achievements and her legacy to Harding students.

No one is more deserving than Clark, said Taylor Smith, who graduated from Harding in 2020 and from Florida A&M University, a public, historically Black university located in Tallahassee, Fla., in December 2022.

Smith, who is pursuing her master’s degree in psychology at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., first visited Florida A&M with Clark during a tour of HBCUs when she was a freshman at Harding.

“I felt comfortable there,” she said. “Its history was very interesting and intriguing. After I applied, I found out their psychology program is African/Black-centered, and that made me not want to apply anywhere else.”

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The success of PROCEED HBCU can be attributed to Clark’s “love and passion for youth enrichment,” Smith said. “People listen to her because she is very direct. She lets you know exactly what is going on, but she also layers that with compassion. She knows what we need to do to help support our kids and our community.”

Tour participants who have graduated are working as “doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, pharmacists, researchers, you name it,” Clark said.

“Those kids I did not give up on are now doing great. What bothers me is people who judge kids as if they have never made a mistake in their lives. Somebody has to speak up for young people.

“I build relationships with them. I understand lots of stuff that is going on with them. You’ve got kids who come to school hungry. You have kids who come to school who have parents who don’t accept their choice about who they love. You have kids who come to school from families whose language is cussing.”

‘Mama JoAnn’

JoAnn Robinson grew up in Memphis, Tenn., and graduated from Miller Hawkins Business College in 1970. In 1976, she married Otis Clark. Four years later, the couple moved to St. Paul’s Battle Creek neighborhood when Otis, who worked for 3M Co., was promoted and transferred to the company’s Maplewood headquarters.

“He tricked me,” she said. “He came home one day and said he got a promotion. ‘Where?’ I said. He said, ‘Minnesota.’ I said, ‘Where in the heck is Minnesota?’”

JoAnn agreed to the move as long as she could “turn the heat up as high as I want to and get a fur coat,” she said. “I didn’t get the fur coat, but he let me turn the heat up.”

Clark ran her own child-care business for 15 years. Harding High School offered a class on day care, and Clark volunteered to bring in her child-care children to work with the students.

“I was there one day, and they were having a college fair,” she said. “I said, ‘Oh, how often do they do this?’ My kids had never brought anything home about it. I didn’t know about it. I didn’t know about the process. I didn’t know you had to do the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). They had these college fairs at the school, but the parents – the ones who actually have to pay for this – they weren’t there.”

Clark, who is co-chair of Progressive Baptist Church’s education ministry team, talked to her then-pastor, Dr. Earl Miller, about her concerns. He suggested that Clark organize a college fair in the church’s basement. The first fair was held in February 2002 to coincide with Black History Month. When the fair outgrew the church’s basement two years later, Clark partnered with SPPS to bring the fair to Harding.

The church later was instrumental in starting the tours of HBCUs.

Clark, known as “Mama JoAnn,” runs a tight ship on the tours. The group, which takes two buses, includes two nurses, two social workers and its own security detail. Participants must agree to a dress code that includes “no sagging.” She brings belts and extra outfits just in case.

“Expectations are very high,” she said. “I don’t want them looking like a nun, but I want them to dress appropriately. If you come down, and you are dressed inappropriately, that means you are going to have to go back up and change and make us late for our next appointment.”

Before the tour starts, Clark asks couples on the tour to raise their hands. “I say, ‘OK, when we get on the bus, you’ve got to break up, but you can pick right back up after you get back,’” she said. “’This is not a honeymoon trip.’”

Registration for the tours starts at 12:01 a.m., and there is generally a waitlist within hours; participants can attend more than one tour. “Some of the kids who started with us have visited over 20 colleges,” she said.

Participants bring their high school transcripts with them on the tour, and many apply to the schools while they are on the tour, said Annette Lee, Clark’s daughter, who serves as student coordinator at PROCEED HBCU. Many have been offered full-ride scholarships on the spot, Lee said.

‘Reach out and help that child’

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, a graduate of Florida A&M, has had two daughters and a niece go on PROCEED HBCU tours. He joins the crew of well-wishers at Progressive Baptist each year for the send-off for tour participants. “I get to tell them how proud I am of them,” he said.

Carter said he decided to go to Florida A&M after he graduated from Central High School in St. Paul because he felt a profound sense of “home” as soon as he stepped foot on the FAMU campus.

“I just felt this amazing sense of belonging – that this was just where I belonged,” he said. “My goal for all of them – whether it’s FAMU or somewhere else – is to be able to have a chance to feel that. The more places they visit, the more chances they have to feel what it felt like for me to just step foot on that campus.”

Research shows that students of color feel more at home – and are more likely to succeed – when they attend schools where they feel supported and welcomed, Carter said.

“Growing up, frankly, there weren’t a lot of people who I both had class with on a Monday morning and hung out with on the weekend,” he said. “That always had a tendency to feel somewhat isolating. And feeling isolated in your educational environment, there’s a whole lot of research that suggests that it doesn’t exactly help your academic performance or your ability to learn. … Even if those students don’t end up choosing a historically Black college, just being able to know that it is there changes everything.”

Clark is an inspiration for her vision and her ability to sustain it, Carter said.

“People in sales know the phrase, ‘Always be closing,’” he said. “She is the personification of that phrase, but she’s closing for the young folks.”

Clark “will give her last dollar to making sure that these students can have this experience,” said Duane Dutrieuille, principal at Hazel Park Preparatory Academy, who is co-chair with Clark of the education ministry team at Progressive Baptist.

“She doesn’t care if you are the president of the United States or the superintendent of schools or the mayor, she will ask you for money,” he said. “She has raised money for this college tour singlehandedly for decades. It’s just a joy to know someone who loves our children so much.”

Clark has received numerous awards through the years, including the President’s Award for Community Service in 2015, the 2021 Annie C. Singleton Award from Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., the 2022 NAACP Award, Mamie Till Mobley Woman of Courage Award, Minnesota African American Heritage Award, the 2006 MLK Legacy Award and the 2022 History Maker at Home Award. In 2022, she received a proclamation from Carter and the city of St. Paul acknowledging Sept. 11 as “JoAnn Clark Day” in the city.

Clark said she keeps a laminated card in her wallet with a quotation from the late radio host Bernard Meltzer. It reads: “Blessed are those who give without remembering. And blessed are those who take without forgetting.”

“It is more blessed to give than to receive. That’s Acts 20:35,” Clark said. “What will your legacy be? Will your legacy be that you reached out and brought that one child up? That child at the bottom of the hill? Did you reach out and help that child climb that hill?”

Thinking Career and College Early Fair

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