Alice Ruth Clark Brown, a dancer and aerial acrobat, was born on August 22, 1952, in Chicago, Illinois, to Charles Clark and Mattie Miller Clark. She was the second of three children, the other two being a brother, Gerry Clark, and a sister, Anna Clark. Her education began at Chicago’s Edmund Burke Elementary School. In 1969, she graduated from DuSable High School in the city. She then attended the University of Illinois at Chicago.
When the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus came to Chicago in 1971, Alice Clark Brown was a 19-year-old Andy Frain “usherette” at the old International Amphitheatre. She left the University and went to Sarasota, Florida, for dance training, signing a Ringling contract that year, becoming one of the first African American women to work as a showgirl, dancer, and aerial acrobat and touring as the first in the Ringling Brothers Circus’s Blue Unit, one of two shows (the other is the Red Unit).
Clark Brown climbed ropes, performed acrobatic stunts, and spun around upside-down, clinging to the spinning rope with only one foot, a knee, and a wrist. She flew through the air while balanced on elephants. Because of her abilities, she was interviewed by Barbara Walters on NBC’s Today show in 1972.
Clark Brown left the circus in 1974 and returned to Chicago, where she worked as a writer and tour guide at the headquarters of Johnson Publishing Company. She married Geoff Brown, a former Chicago Tribune associate managing editor, three years later, on June 4, 1977. They had a son named Geoffrey Jr. and a daughter named Christina.
Clark Brown, who also sang in nightclubs as Brandee Brown and played piano in one of Triton College’s jazz bands, was an extra in the 1988 American comedy film Vice Versa, starring Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage. She also played Nettie in the original cast of Chicago’s Black Ensemble Theater’s production of Precious Lord, Take My Hand in 1993.
Clark Brown earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2004. Clark Brown, vice president of the DuSable High School Alumni Coalition for Action, was instrumental in helping DuSable High School achieve landmark status in 2013. Clark Brown also volunteered in her community for people struggling with substance abuse, worked at a domestic abuse hotline, and tutored and counseled children in after-school programs.
Alice Clark Brown, a pioneering Black circus aerialist, died of interstitial lung disease on June 6, 2021, at her Oak Park home in Chicago, Illinois. She was 68 years old.