20 years after serving as Tustin High School student body president, Letitia Clark is leading the whole city

Mayor Pro Tem Letitia Clark was not only Tustin High School’s student body president for the class of 2000, she was homecoming queen and captain of the cheer team, where she led them to win the Southern California Cheer Championships.

At the suggestion of her homeroom advisor, she also competed in the Miss Tustin pageant, which has only had one Black Miss Tustin: Carmella Vann in 1992.

“There’s people you know from high school who you see later and they’re not the same,” said TyRon Jackson, a former classmate who now runs the Tustin-based nonprofit Operation Warm Wishes. “But Letitia has always been like this: a leader, kind and innovative.”

Macie Manns said she wasn’t surprised when Clark ran for City Council in 2016 and won.

Clark befriended Manns, then a recent transfer student at Tustin High School, in their junior year English honors class, and more recently, their preteen kids ran track together.

“She was always friendly, open and helpful,” Manns said. “Even if you had a difference in opinion, she was patient and always brought up another perspective that made you think and consider, and she encouraged us to be better. And now she does that for the entire city of Tustin.”

Born in Garden Grove, Clark grew up near the border of Santa Ana and Tustin.

She remembers that, at the time, Tustin High School was known around O.C. as “the Black high school,” though she estimates the student body was about 10% African American. At the time, the Black community made up approximately 1.7% of the population in Orange County. Now, it’s about 2%.

Clark attributes the relative diversity of Tustin to families that moved there because of the city’s Marine Corps Air Station, now closed.

After high school, she went to college in New Orleans and got a master’s in public policy. She was working for a city council member when Hurricane Katrina hit.

“That really cemented my desire to serve at a local level, whether it was in elected office or as a career,” she said. “I realized the importance of the local municipality and the value they have in their area to make immediate change.”

After New Orleans, Clark, a Democrat, worked for a year in Atlanta as a policy analyst for a white Republican speaker of the house.

“For him to hire me and trust me and let me have influence in his policy-making, he did it as an olive branch to get his Democratic colleagues and the Georgia Black Caucus to talk to him about certain issues,” she said. “He said ‘I’m hoping your presence will make a difference,’ and it did.”

When she returned to Tustin in 2012, post-divorce with 5-year-old twins, she continued to serve the local community. She started the organization Black Professionals in Orange County and was the executive director of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ O.C. chapter.

When she ran for City Council in 2016, the three white conservative candidates banded together and called themselves Team Tustin, as she, the only female candidate of color, was left out. But four years later, they all serve on the council together.

Tustin is a rare city in the county that doesn’t pay its council members for the work that often amounts to a second full-time job. This is due to a measure that was passed in 2012, which is up for vote again this November.

In her day job, Clark is the district director of public affairs and government relations at the South Orange County Community College District.

When George Floyd’s death made national news, even before protests popped up in Orange County, Clark thought it was important to release a video statement, as one of few Black elected officials in Orange County. (Marshall Goodman is a councilman in La Palma, and Tanya Doby was recently appointed in Los Alamitos in January.)

She spoke of how she felt that silence was complicity and encouraged protesters to continue the fight for systemic change after the protests by getting involved in local politics.

Pointing out that residents vote for judges, district attorneys and other leaders that set the tone for their police department and criminal justice system, she reminded her listeners of the power that voters have at the local level.

When she wanted the Tustin council to release an official solidarity proclamation with those protesting peacefully against injustice, racism and hate, her fellow members were behind her, she said.

“We have a responsibility, even more so now, to hold forums in settings that feel safe for communities to have these difficult conversations,” she said.

When she hears the call to action to “defund the police,” she sees it less as a direct threat to the budget of her own city’s police department, but more as a start of a necessary conversation.

“I think it’s showing the power that certain police departments have had and asking why certain actions haven’t led to convictions or firings,” she said. “So the premise behind the call to action to defund police is because of the money associated with some police departments throughout the nation that often leads to an imbalance of power — where some police officers feel like they are above the law or protected because of their level of influence.”

But she said she has also heard from some local police officers who say that they didn’t used to be responsible for homelessness, substance abuse and mental health issues. And that they could use help.

“Every city is not equal,” she said. “We have to be careful to not just adopt whatever rhetoric is being told on a national level, but think about how does this pertain to our local community. How do we divvy and redistribute funds as needed, or how do we collectively advocate for more funds for our community?”

She believes that the police should be at the table for these discussions. The Tustin Police Department is diverse, she said, and she thinks other cities can learn from their Citizen’s Academy, a 16-week program that directly connects the police with the community.

“To me, that promotes transparency and helps educate the community about the police department and community policing,” she said. “To show that we are partners. This isn’t an adversarial relationship. We want to work together to make sure the community is safe.”

Clark is inspired by the empathetic conversations that George Floyd’s death have sparked.

She said some of her longtime nonblack friends have started asking her about the racism she faced growing up in Orange County.

She said they’re surprised to learn that she was called the n-word on the playground when she was 8 years old. But they’re also realizing that the reason they didn’t know is because they never asked.

At the same time, she said she had a great childhood in Tustin.

“It always felt very diverse,” she said. “I grew up feeling welcome in O.C., enough that as an adult, I wanted to come back and raise my family here.”

Jackson is proud of his former classmate and what she represents as one of a handful of African American political leaders in Orange County.

“She’s showing all those people who marched for Civil Rights back in the day that their labor is not in vain, because she’s carrying out the work they wanted her to do,” he said. “And that’s beautiful.”

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