Appalachian Figures
Born in Knott County in 1942, Elijah Haydn “Lige” Clarke grew up between Cave Branch and Hindman. He carried Appalachian sensibilities into national activism. Historian Jonathan Coleman argues that Clarke’s mountain upbringing shaped a politics that rejected respectability and favored personal freedom and experiment. Coleman’s peer-reviewed study is the deepest scholarly treatment of Clarke’s life and Kentucky roots.
From Cave Branch to Washington
After college in Kentucky, Clarke served in the U.S. Army and worked in Washington in a Pentagon post that required high-level clearances. In the capital he met Jack Nichols. Clarke joined the Mattachine milieu and began to agitate for gay rights in public settings that were still risky in the mid 1960s. Coleman links this period to Clarke’s later critique of assimilation and to a personal ethic that drew on Kentucky community life.
A column called “The Homosexual Citizen”
By 1968 Clarke and Nichols were writing the regular column “The Homosexual Citizen” for Screw. It brought a gay voice into a non-gay publication at mass scale and helped set the tone for post-Stonewall media. The NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project documents this phase and the couple’s move to New York.
Building GAY: a weekly newspaper from a Midtown loft
In December 1969 the pair helped launch GAY, which quickly became a widely distributed weekly covering politics, culture, and movement life. Contemporary coverage and photos place the newspaper’s offices on West 17th Street in 1971 to 1972. The site also preserves period images of Nichols and Clarke at work.
Entire runs of GAY survive. Scanned issues show the breadth of their project and its blend of reportage and commentary. These files are a crucial primary record for the early 1970s liberation years.
Books in their own words
Clarke and Nichols published I Have More Fun with You Than Anybody in 1972. The Internet Archive hosts a copy that preserves their voice as authors and advice-givers to a new readership.
Death on the Tuxpan road
Clarke was killed near Tuxpan, Veracruz, on 10 February 1975 while traveling with friend Charles Black. A contemporaneous U.S. State Department cable from the Embassy in Mexico City summarized the police report, noted a robbery-murder on the highway, recorded three gunshot wounds, and reported that Congressman Carl D. Perkins of Hindman had taken interest in the case. The cable also tracked press reports that a gang had been arrested for a series of assaults in the region.
Jack Nichols’s four-page letter of 22 February 1975 offers a first-person account and grief-stricken context from Clarke’s partner and collaborator. It is an essential companion to the consular record.
Clarke’s remains were returned to Kentucky. He is buried at Hicks Family Cemetery above Hindman, a site that visually anchors the dates and place for researchers and family. Treat the user-submitted text there with caution. The headstone photos remain useful for confirming burial and inscription.
Kentucky memory and legacy
Regional institutions have begun to center Clarke as a son of Appalachian Kentucky who shaped national queer politics. Recent features from the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky and Faulkner Morgan Archive summarize his life, connect it to present work, and document continued remembrance.
JSTOR Daily provides an accessible synthesis of Coleman’s research for general readers, reinforcing the Appalachian threads that run through Clarke’s activism and writing.
Sources and further reading
U.S. State Department cable. “Death of Clark in Tuxpan, Veracruz.” Mexico City Embassy to Department of State. 21 Feb. 1975. Consular summary of events, mentions involvement by Rep. Carl D. Perkins, and notes arrests reported in the Veracruz press. search.wikileaks.org
Jack Nichols. “Letter upon death of his partner Lige Clarke.” 22 Feb. 1975. Rainbow History Project Digital Collections. Four-page first-person account written days after Clarke’s death. archives.rainbowhistory.org
GAY newspaper. Digitized issues, 1969 to 1974. Houston LGBT History and JD Doyle Archives. Contemporary reporting and editorials by Nichols and Clarke. houstonlgbthistory.org
Lige Clarke and Jack Nichols. I Have More Fun with You Than Anybody. New York, 1972. Internet Archive Open Library entry and scan. Open Library
NYPL Digital Collections. Photos of Lige Clarke and Jack Nichols in movement settings, including office and rally scenes. From the Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen papers.
NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project. “GAY Newspaper Offices.” Site entry with period images and publication context.
Find A Grave. “Elijah Haydn ‘Lige’ Clarke — Hicks Family Cemetery, Hindman.” Use for headstone imagery only. Find A Grave
Jonathan Coleman. “‘Old Kentucky Homo’: Lige Clarke’s Gay Liberation.” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 118:1, Winter 2020. Deep analysis of Clarke’s Appalachian background and political ideas. JSTOR
JSTOR Daily. Livia Gershon, “Gay Radicalism, Made in Kentucky.” Summary of Coleman’s findings with links to primary materials. JSTOR Daily
Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky. “Celebrating Kentuckian and LGBTQ+ Activist, Lige Clarke.” Regional profile and present-day initiatives in Clarke’s name. The Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky
Faulkner Morgan Archive. “Lige Clarke.” Collection overview tying Kentucky memory work to national narratives. Faulkner Morgan Archive