Civil Rights Movement leader, war on poverty advocate, the Queen Mother herself: Dale Clinton will have her legacy honored with the renaming of the MLK Park Facilities Center to the Dale E. Clinton Facilities Center.
At nearly 99 years old, Clinton has touched countless lives throughout Long Beach. Over the course of several decades, she worked to enroll youth and families into life-changing programs to combat poverty and discrimination and laid the groundwork for MLK Park’s Central Facility Center, which has provided health services to the local community since the mid ‘70s.
“When she arrived in Long Beach in 1959 with five children and limited resources, she did not retreat from hardship. She leaned into service,” said Sharifa Batts, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP) Long Beach branch. “She became a leader in the war on poverty programs, helped approve families for the first Head Start classes in Long Beach, and even wrote President Lyndon B. Johnson to preserve federal funding for Head Start.”
Clinton was born in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1927 and as a young woman moved westward twice during the Great Migration of African Americans. Once in Long Beach, Clinton leaned on her community and Equal Opportunity Programs to support herself and her children, quickly becoming an advocate and helping others do the same…