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IEEE-USA Releases New Famous Women Engineers in History: On Yvonne “YY” Clark

By Paul Lief Rosengren

Yvonne “YY” Clark had a 55-year career educating future engineers; contributed to the Apollo space program; and was the first Black woman hired at several companies. These successes followed double discrimination — both because she was Black — and because she was a woman.

  • Clark was accepted and received a full scholarship to The University of Louisville, then university leaders told her they had not realized she was Black, and rescinded her acceptance and scholarship. (The State of Kentucky agreed to pay four years of Clark’s education at Howard University in D.C., to avoid a lawsuit). A year later, the NAACP challenged the University’s segregationist policies — leading to the university’s integration.
  • Clark was the first woman graduate in mechanical engineering at Howard University — but because she was a woman, she was not allowed to march alongside the 300 male mechanical engineering graduates. (She got her diploma in the President’s office).
  • Ford Glass Plant executives in Nashville, Tennessee, denied Clark a job because she was a woman. Her recruiter remarked upon seeing her, “We have no place for you here.”
  • When Clark showed up for an interview with the U.S. Navy, a commander told her it was a bad omen to have a woman on a ship — and he ended the interview.
  • Clark was the first Black to become a member of the Society of Woman Engineers (SWE) in 1951. In 1957, SWE held their annual conference in Houston, Texas. When she went to register for the conference, she was denied a room at the convention hotel. The hotel management additionally informed SWE that Clark could not attend the conference. SWE threatened to pull out of the hotel. However, at Clark’s urging, the two sides came to a compromise, where Clark could attend the conference (though always escorted by a white member). The hotel executives reimbursed for her room. She stayed with a Houston relative.

Despite the challenges, Clark became the first black woman engineer to work at Frankford Arsenal Gage Laboratories, the RCA plant in Camden, and at the Ford plant in Nashville. Yes, the same plant that told her “We have no place for you,” hired her years later to work for multiple summers.

Clark eventually landed in academia, where she spent 55 years teaching in the mechanical engineering department of Tennessee State University (TSU), a historical Black university. She was the first woman faculty member of the department, and the first woman to head the department. When Clark started at TSU in 1956, there were no female students in the mechanical engineering department, but she was particularly proud that by 1972, 25 percent of the students enrolled in mechanical engineering were women — in part because of her outreach efforts as head of the department.

Marquan Martin, a former student of Clark wrote in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, “She challenged you, encouraged you, and she genuinely cared about every student. She was an amazing professor and mentor, a true gem to the Tennessee State University community.”

Clark spent summers tackling practical problems for industry and government agencies, including working at NASA to resolve hot spots on the Saturn V rockets; and assisting in the design of “The Rock Box” that transported moon rocks collected on six Apollo missions back to earth.

In 1997, the SWE conference returned to Houston. This time, Clark received a plaque, a key to the city, and an apology for her treatment four decades earlier.

Learn more about the remarkable life of Yvonne Clark in the new IEEE-USA E-Book, Famous Women Engineers in History – Book 8: Yvonne “YY” Clark – “Don’t Give Up! It is the eighth e-book in the award-winning Famous Women Engineers In History series. All the e-books in the series are available here at the IEEE-USA Shop free for members. Non-members pay $2.99.

IEEE-USA Publishing Manager and Editor, IEEE-USA E-Books, Georgia C. Stelluto initiated and edits the series. Author Paul Lief Rosengren has written all the books in this series.

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Paul Lief Rosengren

Paul Lief Rosengren is a frequent contributor to IEEE-USA InSight and author of the Famous Women Engineers in History series. He also co-authored In the Time of COVID: One Hospital’s Struggles and Triumphs about the first year of COVID at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, NJ. Rosengren previously worked in internal and external communications for the State of New Jersey, NBC, PSEG, and BD. While at PSEG, he was a founding member of the PSEG Diversity Council, initiated and facilitated the PSEG D&I Book Club and received the PR News Diversity Award.

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