Wynetta Martin Clark

Wynetta Willis Martin Clark was one of the first African Americans to sing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the first African American to be a member of the faculty at Brigham Young University.

She was born and reared in the Los Angeles area. Although religious parents raised her, she found herself searching for something lacking in her life and secretly dreamed of being a missionary.

She married and bore two daughters, but the marriage dissolved. A friend introduced her to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and she was baptized in 1966. A few years later, she moved to Utah to audition for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and was invited to join the choir. She felt it was her personal mission to prove to the world that there were African-American Mormons and that Mormons were not racist. She toured with the choir for two years. She then accepted a position at BYU to train nurses.

She is the author of the memoir Black Mormon Tells Her Story: The Truth Sang Louder than My Position. She passed away in Hawaii in 2000.