Alice Gail Pollard Clark

Alice Gail Pollard Clark (born February 12, 1940) is a retired American judge from Maryland. In 1997, she became the first African American woman to serve as district judge for Howard County, Maryland.

Biography

Alice Gail Pollard was born on February 12, 1940 in Washington, D.C. She grew up on Randolph Place in the LeDroit Park neighborhood of Northwest, Washington. The area would become notable as the home of four black women who would eventually become pioneering jurists, one of them Clark. Pollard graduated from Washington's Paul Lawrence Dunbar Senior High School in before heading to university.

Educator Clark attended Howard University and graduated with a bachelors degree in Science in 1961. She would go on to became a science teacher in the District of Columbia Public Schools system. In 1963, she received a Masters degree from Catholic University of America. Clark graduated from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1982 and passed the bar exam the following year.

Legal career

In 1990, she became the first black woman attorney in the Howard County office of the Public Defender.