Sixty-Four Years Ago Today: Emma Clarissa Clement Named American Mother Of The Year

When the call came through to her Louisville home last week, Emma Clarissa Clement was off at a district church conference in Springfield, Ky. Her daughter took the message. Mrs. Clement had just been elected American Mother of 1946 by the Golden Rule Foundation. Said the citation: “A mother of children who are devotedly serving their country and their people, a partner in her husband’s ministry in his lifetime, a social and community worker in her own right.”

Emma Clement, 71, widow of a bishop, could well be proud of her three daughters and four sons. All of them had graduated from Livingstone College in Salisbury, N.C., where she had been married on her own Commencement Day nearly 50 years ago. Four were now college professors—one of them a college president, another, a chaplain, just out of the Army with a major’s commission. A fifth was still overseas as a Red Cross field director in Italy. Now her children could be prouder than ever of her.

It took a little while to get the call relayed to Mrs. Clement. She had to get the news of the honor that had come to her, and to her race, at the telephone office. There is only one telephone in the Negro section of Springfield, Ky.