Cheryl Clarke

The daughter of James Sheridan Clarke, a World War II veteran, and Edna Clarke, Cheryl Clarke was born and raised in Washington, D.C. Clarke's parents were government workers and she was raised Catholic.

When she was 13 years old, Clarke crossed a picket line of African-American activists protesting segregation at Woolworth's on 14th Street. When she came home, her mother, a staunch union member, told her never to cross a picket line again, educating her about the role of direct action in the civil rights movement. At 16, Clarke was allowed by her parents to attend the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom with them. The day before the march, on her way downtown to acquire information about the route, she encountered Martin Luther King Jr., who would deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech the next day.

Clarke attended parochial schools in the District of Columbia, and graduated from Howard University with a B.A. degree in English literature in 1969. Subsequently, she enrolled at Rutgers University, completing a Master of Arts in 1974, a Master of Social Work in 1980, and a PhD in 2000. For much of this time, she also worked for Rutgers, beginning her employment there in 1970 in the Urban University Program. In 1992, she was the founding Director of Diverse Community Affairs and Lesbian/Gay Concerns, which later became the Office for Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities. She served as the dean of students of the Livingston Campus at Rutgers University from 2010 to 2013, when she retired.