Michele Clark was born in Gary, Indiana on June 2, 1943. She attended the University of Chicago Laboratory High School, Grinnell College in Iowa and Roosevelt University in Chicago. In 1972 she graduated from a new program at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism created to recruit, train, and place minority journalists. Upon graduating, she began work as a reporter for WBBM-TV, a CBS owned station in Chicago. In July of 1972 she was named as a CBS News Correspondent. Her major responsibilities involved coverage of the 1972 presidential primaries.
She was killed on December 8, 1972, in a plane crash at Chicago's Midway Airport. She was 29 years old. The Summer Program in Broadcast and Print Journalism for Members of Minority Groups at Columbia University, from which Michele Clark graduated, was named in honor of her memory.
