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The local history gallery currently features “Alexander Clark: Civil Rights Leader.” Alexander Clark is regarded as Muscatine’s most prominent black citizen, and one of the community’s most accomplished residents and a prominent Iowa civil rights leader. Clark is notable in Iowa history for other things, too. He sued the Muscatine school board on behalf of his daughter, Susan, in a landmark case that outlawed school segregation in Iowa. His son, Alexander Jr., became the first black graduate of the University of Iowa law school in 1879. Alexander Sr. became the second black graduate of the law school in 1884 at the age of 58. In August 1862, Clark sent a letter to Governor Kirkwood offering to raise companies of black troops to serve in one of Iowa’s white regiments (this was at a time when integrated troops were not allowed). By the summer of 1863, Alexander Clark and community leader George V. Black began recruiting for the 1st Regiment of Iowa African Infantry.

ODE TO THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI RIVER, PEARL AND HER MOTHER Exhibition by Nancy Purington Historic Musser McColm Home Second Floor Luminous colors, studied textures, and repeating patterns are Nancy Purington’s tools for expressing the ever changing moods of the Mississippi River. A self-described student of the mighty river, Purington’s works are meditations on the Mississippi’s moments of calm, bursts of overwhelming brightness, slow drifts of murky fog, and clashes at the confluence. Oils and precious metals are combined to capture golden and silver reflections against a background of mystic dark navies, satin backs, emerald blues, and pools of white. Purington places the viewer on the water’s edge, ready to make either a peaceful passage or a dramatic battle down river to the gulf. Purington’s work, like the river, has the ability to transport.