For greater than a century, girls and racial minorities have fought for entry to training and employment alternatives as soon as reserved solely for white males. The lifetime of Yvonne Young “Y.Y.” Clark is a testomony to the facility of perseverance in that combat. As a sensible Black girl who shattered the limitations imposed by race and gender, she made historical past a number of occasions throughout her profession in academia and trade.
She most likely is finest referred to as the primary girl to function a school member intheengineering college at Tennessee State University, in Nashville. Her pioneering spirit prolonged far past the classroom, nonetheless, as she constantly staked out new territory for girls and Black professionals in engineering. She completed loads earlier than she died on 27 January 2019 at her residence in Nashville on the age of 89.
Clark is the topic of the newest biography in IEEE-USA’s Famous Women Engineers in History collection. “Don’t Give Up” was her mantra.
An early ardour for know-how
Born on 13 April 1929 in Houston, Clark moved along with her household to Louisville,Ky., as a child. She was raised in an academically pushed household. Her father, Dr. Coleman M. Younger Jr., was a surgeon. Her mom, Hortense H. Younger, was a library scientist and journalist. Her mom’s “Tense Matters” column, revealed by the Louisville Defender newspaper, tackled segregation, housing discrimination, and civil rights points, instilling consciousness of social justice in Y.Y.
Clark’s ardour for know-how turned evident at a younger age. As a toddler, she secretly repaired her household’s malfunctioning toaster, shocking her mother and father. It was a defining second, signaling to her household that she was destined for a profession in engineering—not in training like her older sister, a highschool math instructor.
“Y.Y.’s household didn’t create her ardour or her abilities. These have been her personal,” mentioned Carol Sutton Lewis, co-host and producer for the third season of the “Lost Women of Science” podcast, on which Clark was profiled. “What her household did do, and what they might proceed to do, was make her pursuits viable in a world that wasn’t truthful.”
Clark’s curiosity in finding out engineering was precipitated by her ardour for aeronautics. She mentioned all of the pilots she spoke with had studied engineering, so she was decided to take action. She joined the Civil Air Patrol and took simulated flying classes. She then realized to fly an airplane with the assistance of a household pal.
Regardless of her educational excellence, although, racial limitations stood in her means. She graduated at age 16 from Louisville’s Central High Schoolin 1945. Her mother and father, involved that she was too younger to attend school, despatched her to Boston for 2 further years on the Girls’ Latin School and Roxbury Memorial High School.
She then utilized to the University of Louisville, the place she was initially accepted and provided a full scholarship. When college directors realized she was Black, nonetheless, they rescinded the scholarship and the admission, Clark mentioned on the “Misplaced Ladies of Science” podcast, which included clips from when her daughter interviewed her in 2007. As Clark defined within the interview, the state of Kentucky provided to pay her tuition to attend Howard University, a traditionally Black school in Washington, D.C., somewhat than combine its publicly funded college.
Breaking limitations in larger training
Though Howard supplied a possibility, it was not freed from discrimination. Clark confronted gender-based limitations, in line with the IEEE-USA biography. She was the one girl amongst 300 mechanical engineeringcollege students, a lot of whom have been World Conflict II veterans.
“Y.Y.’s household didn’t create her ardour or her abilities. These have been her personal. What her household did do, and what they might proceed to do, was make her pursuits viable in a world that wasn’t truthful.” —Carol Sutton Lewis
Regardless of the challenges, she persevered and in 1951 turned the primary girl to earn a bachelor’s diploma in mechanical engineering from the college. The varsity downplayed her historic achievement, nonetheless. In reality, she was not allowed to march along with her classmates at commencement. As an alternative, she acquired her diploma throughout a non-public ceremony within the college president’s workplace.
A profession outlined by firsts
Decided to forge a profession in engineering, Clark repeatedly encountered racial and gender discrimination. In a 2007 Society of Women Engineers (SWE) StoryCorps interview, she recalled that when she utilized for an engineering place with the U.S. Navy, the interviewer bluntly informed her, “I don’t suppose I can rent you.” When she requested why not, he replied, “You’re feminine, and all engineers exit on a shakedown cruise,” the journey throughout which the efficiency of a ship is examined earlier than it enters service or after it undergoes main adjustments reminiscent of an overhaul. She mentioned the interviewer informed her, “The omen is: ‘No females on the shakedown cruise.’”
Clark ultimately landed a job with the U.S. Military’s Frankford Arsenal gauge laboratories in Philadelphia, turning into the primary Black girl employed there. She designed gauges and finalized product drawings for the small-arms ammunition and range-finding devices manufactured there. Tensions arose, nonetheless, when a few of her colleagues resented that she earned more cash as a consequence of additional time pay, in line with the IEEE-USA biography. To ease workplace tensions, the Military lowered her hours, prompting her to hunt different alternatives.
Her future husband, Invoice Clark, noticed the problem she was having securing interviews, and instructed she use the gender-neutral identify Y.Y. on her résumé.
The tactic labored. She turned the primary Black girl employed by RCA in 1955. She labored for the company’s electronic tube division in Camden, N.J.
Though she excelled at designing manufacturing facility tools, she encountered extra office hostility.
“Sadly,” the IEEE-USA biography says, she “felt animosity from her colleagues and resentment for her success.”
When Invoice, who had taken a school place as a biochemistry teacher at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, proposed marriage, she eagerly accepted. They married in December 1955, and she or he moved to Nashville.
In 1956 Clark utilized for a full-time place at Ford Motor Co.’sNashville glass plant, the place she had interned through the summers whereas she was a Howard pupil. Regardless of her {qualifications}, she was denied the job as a consequence of her race and gender, she mentioned.
She determined to pursue a profession in academia, turning into in 1956 the primary girl to show mechanical engineering at Tennessee State College. In 1965 she turned the primary girl to chairTSU’smechanical engineering division.
Whereas instructing at TSU, she pursued additional training, incomes a grasp’s diploma in engineering management from Nashville’s Vanderbilt Universityin 1972—one other step in her lifelong dedication to skilled development.
After 55 years with the college, the place she was additionally a freshman pupil advisor for a lot of that point, Clark retired in 2011 and was named professor emeritus.
A legacy of management and advocacy
Clark’s affect prolonged far past TSU. She was lively within the Society of Women Engineers after turning into its first Black member in 1951.
Racism, nonetheless, adopted her even inside skilled circles.
On the 1957 SWE convention in Houston, the occasion’s lodge initially refused her entry as a consequence of segregation insurance policies, in line with a 2022 profile of Clark. Beneath strain from the society’s management, the lodge compromised; Clark may attend classes however needed to be escorted by a white girl always and was not allowed to remain within the lodge regardless of having paid for a room. She was reimbursed and as an alternative stayed with kinfolk.
On account of that incident, the SWE vowed by no means once more to carry a convention in a segregated metropolis.
Over the many years, Clark remained a champion for girls in STEM. In a single SWE interview, she suggested future generations: “Put together your self. Do your work. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, and profit by assembly with different girls. No matter you want, find out about it and pursue it.
“The setting is what you make it. Generally the setting is hostile, however don’t fear about it. Pay attention to it so that you aren’t blindsided.”
Her contributions earned her quite a few accolades together with the 1998 SWE Distinguished Engineering Educator Award and the 2001 Tennessee Society of Skilled Engineers Distinguished Service Award.
An enduring impression
Clark’s legacy was not confined to engineering; she was deeply concerned in Nashville group service. She served on the board of the 18th Avenue Family Enrichment Center and took part within the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce. She was lively within the Hendersonville Space chapter of The Links, a volunteer service group for Black girls, and the Nashville alumnae chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. She additionally mentored members of the Boy Scouts, a lot of whom went on to pursue engineering careers.
Clark spent her life pulling down limitations that attempted to impede her. She didn’t simply break the glass ceiling—she engineered a means by it for individuals who got here after her.
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