Late strike of Britain’s first black female footballer
After a century in obscurity, the trailblazer Emma Clarke can play a powerful role in battle for equality, says Katie Whyatt
So potent was the threat of harassment, players used pseudonyms to protect their identities
It is 123 years since Emma Clarke sprang to public prominence as Britain’s first black female footballer. But her story, which lay undiscovered for more than a century, still resonates with those continuing her fight for equality.
Clarke was discovered by artist Stuart Gibbs during research for an exhibition on the history of women’s football, but there is still a dearth of biographical detail, which is typical of women’s sport history.
It is harder, therefore, to find the information needed to apply for plaques and statues. There are two statues of sportswomen in Britain – tennis player Dorothy Round in Dudley and pentathlete Dame Mary Peters in Belfast.
Gibbs has established Clarke was born in Liverpool in 1876 and, aged 15, began working as a confectioner’s apprentice. Her younger sister, Jane, was also a footballer. It is thought the pair played in the streets of Bootle before Clarke made her British Ladies debut in 1895.
She represented them until 1903 aside from a hiatus, when Mrs Graham’s XI recruited her for a tour of Scotland in 1896. Clarke, an occasional goalkeeper but more often an outfield player, probably earned around a shilling a week.
“A lot of women’s sport was a spectacle,” says Michelle Moore, a former athlete who co-curated an event on Clarke, held last night at the Royal Society of Arts. “If you happened to be a woman of colour, you were seen even more. You were under the threat of physical abuse.”
So potent was the threat of harassment that players used pseudonyms to protect their identities.
Futures Theatre dramatised Clarke’s life as part of their 2017 production Offside. For several months, Gibbs and others had thought Britain’s first black female footballer was named Carrie Boustead, and the initial draft of the play chronicled events from Boustead’s perspective.
Months later Gibbs discovered a mistake in the records and identified Clarke, prompting Offside’s writers to rework their piece.
Gibbs estimates Emma died in 1905, aged 30. But could she be another casualty of history’s reluctance to look beyond the white, male perspective, and be one of the once celebrated, but now unknown, women footballers?
“Because black people are under-represented in British history books, it never crossed my mind that someone like Emma could be excelling at football,” says Charlie Cuff, deputy editor of Gal-dem, a magazine written by women and non-binary people of colour.
Data from BCOMS, the Black Collective of Media in Sport, underlined the lack of diversity in the British media. One black writer covered the World Cup for a British newspaper, and BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) journalists make up 9.5 per cent of broadcast and written media for major sports events. The number is 3.25 per cent for BAME women.
Sharing Clarke’s story is a step to encouraging women like her to engage with the game in greater numbers. “When I take my nieces along Wembley Way and they see the statue of Bobby Moore, they don’t relate to it,” says Moore. “If they see a statue of Emma Clarke, they are going to want to have their photo taken.”