Clarence Lightner - Early Life

Early Life

Lightner was born in Raleigh to Mammie Blackmon and Calvin E. Lightner, founder of the Lightner Funeral Home and a local leader who ran for office as a nonpartisan with Dr. Manassa T. Pope. Calvin Lightner graduated from Shaw College in Raleigh. Both parents encouraged Clarence to attend college, an ambitious goal in an era when only 1.7% of contemporary black men in the South earned a college degree, and only 5.9% of white men nationwide did so.

Lightner graduated from North Carolina Central University, a historically black college in Durham, North Carolina. Lightner also attended Echols College of Mortuary Science in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to prepare for working with his father as a funeral director. While attending North Carolina Central University, Lightner was a star athlete and inducted into the CIAA Hall of Fame. He became a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, one of the first founded by African Americans. It was a connection that would provide a lifelong social network.

Lightner served three years in the United States Army during World War II, then returned to Raleigh. Growing up in the state capital, Lightner had the advantages of a city with an educated and politically sophisticated black middle class, of which his parents were part. Despite official discouragement of black voter registration, for instance, with efforts by the Negro Voters League starting in 1931, by 1946 there were 7,000 black voters registered in the city, which was rare in the segregated South. Political activism increased in the postwar years, but most black voters in the South were disfranchised until the passage of the national Voting Rights Act.

After returning home, Lightner became an independent businessman, working with his father to manage the Lightner Funeral Home and Hillside Cemetery. In 1946, he married Marguerite Massey. They had four children: Claire, Debra, Lawrence (who died before his father), and Bruce. Lightner and Marguerite were active members of Davie Street Presbyterian Church, where he served as an elder.

Lightner managed the funeral home for 45 years, succeeding his father as owner of the business. The work made him a cornerstone of the community. He was an active member of professional associations for learning, and served as president of the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association. Keeping up his fraternal ties, Lightner was chair of the Life Membership Foundation of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.