Missouri’s first black member of Congress, Rep. William L. Clay Sr., who was known for being a fighter for both civil and workers’ rights for over three decades passed away on Wednesday. Clay was 94.
During his 32 years of service, the congressman represented the state’s 1st District from 1969 to 2001. Clay was known for using his clout in the city of St. Louis, being a driving force behind many big redevelopment projects and pushing for hiring in city jobs.
When it came to Democrats in other realms of politics within Missouri, his endorsement could almost guarantee a victory, just as his withholding of an endorsement could lead to a candidate’s ruin. To call him influential on the left would be an understatement.
“Clay was instrumental in fostering a political environment where African Americans could wield real, tangible political power throughout St. Louis. His son, former Congressman Lacy Clay, said his father able to hold that role because he commanded respect among Black St. Louisans,” STLNPR reported.
“The Black community, almost overwhelmingly, looked at him as a fighter for them,” Lacy Clay went on to say Thursday.
He launched his elective career at age 28, winning the 26th Ward seat on the St. Louis Board of Aldermen in 1959. Clay’s House biography says he “embraced his radical reputation,” built over his years as an alderman, union leader and civil rights leader.
Clay was at the center of the sit-ins in the 1950s and ’60s that desegregated St. Louis fixtures such as White Castle and Howard Johnson’s, Fairground Park’s swimming pool and the Fox Theatre. He was a pivotal figure in the historic Jefferson Bank demonstrations that gave Black people entrée into white-collar jobs in the service industry. Congenial but blunt, fierce and gregarious, Clay refused to accept the practiced inequality in his hometown.
“St. Louis was no different from any of the cities in the South,” Clay explained in a profile from 1998. “We had rigid segregation — not by law, but by custom.”
The congressman’s retirement years were spent in Silver Spring, Maryland. After stepping down from his political career, his son, William Lacy Clay Jr., took his spot in Congress until 2021.
William Lacy Clay was born in St. Louis on April 30, 1931, the fourth of the seven children of Irving Clay, a welder, and Luella Hyatt Clay. He grew up in downtown St. Louis in a cold-water apartment near what’s now the Columbus Square neighborhood. By 13, he was working as a janitor in a clothing store, where he would later become the tailor.
Clay, when he was just 18, was accused by a former convict of being involved in the robbery and murder of a white couple in 1949 on the streets of St. Louis. It was this incident, combined with a police officer shoving his mother down the stairs when she tried to prevent him from being beaten with a hose that convinced him to get involved in politics.
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