Karen Joy Clark Papers

Karen Joy Clark was born on July 23rd, 1945 in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. She was raised on a farm in southwestern Minnesota and has resided in South Minneapolis since 1967. Clark obtained her Bachlors in Science in Nursing from the College of Saint Theresa in Winona and later attended the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in Cambridge Massachusetts where she earned her Master of Public Service Administration degree. She worked previously as a nurse for Hennepin County Health Department and was employed by the University of Minnesota as an instructor. Clark was first elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 1980 and was re-elected every two years until her retirement in 2018. She was the first openly gay person to run and be elected to the Minnesota State Legislature. She helped to co-found the Women’s Environmental Institute and some of her major legislative accomplishments include chief authoring and passing worker and consumer right-to- know toxic exposure laws, affordable housing and homelessness initiatives, youth and dislocated worker job training strategies, extensive work in the fields of human rights, environmental justice and anti-discrimination protections. In 2013 she authored and helped pass the Minnesota Freedom to Marry bill with bi-partisan support.