Otis Clark - Telegraph Otis Grandville Clark was born on a homestead near Guthrie, Oklahoma, on February 13 1903, four years before Oklahoma became a state, and grew up in the Greenwood neighbourhood of Tulsa. His father was a former slave who had moved to Oklahoma after emancipation, though Otis was brought up by his mother and stepfather . By the early 20th century Tulsa was an oil boom town, and Greenwood, known as "Black Wall Street," was home to one of America's most prosperous African-American communities. "We had hotels, restaurants, pool halls, skating rinks," Clark recalled. Everything they had downtown, we had here. But the prosperity of Tulsa's black community was resented by many whites, and racial tensions were exacerbated by the revival of the Ku Klux Klan after 1915. Then, on May 31 1921, the 18-year-old Clark was warned by a neighbour that a "ruckus" was on its way. By all accounts, the trouble began after a black shoeshine boy stepped on the foot of a white woman as he entered a lift, causing her to scream. The boy was arrested on suspicion of assault (rumours spread that the woman had been raped), and tempers flared when blacks and whites gathered at the jail amid rumours that the boy was to be lynched. In the next few hours as many as 10,000 whites, including police and National Guard troops, poured into Greenwood, where they embarked on an orgy of killing, looting and burning. Survivors told of white rioters kicking down the doors of homes and businesses, torching the buildings and firing guns wildly at their fleeing occupants. After 16 hours of mayhem the black section of town had been reduced to ashes, and many of its former residents - some estimates put the toll as high as 300 - were dead. Thousands were left destitute. Clark stayed in Tulsa only to search for his stepfather and his bulldog, Bob, who had disappeared during the riot. "We never did see them no more," he recalled. Survivors spoke later of seeing bodies dumped into the Arkansas river, into mining pits and into mass graves which were subsequently covered by housing and commercial developments. Afterwards Clark fled Tulsa to look for his real father, who worked on the railways, and eventually found him in Los Angeles. There Clark found work as an extra in the Hollywood studios. He also found work in domestic service for actors including Clark Gable and Charlie Chaplin. In particular he became a great friend of the black character actor Stepin Fetchit, and worked as a butler for Joan Crawford, living in her Hollywood mansion with his first wife, who worked as a cook. But he never had much time for what he called the "show folks." " They'd tell other folks how to act and they didn't act that way themselves," he recalled. It was while he was in jail for bootlegging that he found God: "I made up my mind to join the Salvation Army," he recalled. After his release he became involved with the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles - the birthplace of Pentecostalism. He was ordained and embarked on a life as a preacher, eventually becoming a bishop with Life Enrichment Ministries, an association of 250 non-denominational congregations which he co-founded with his "spiritual daughter," Gwynneth Williams. Clark, who took the first of two "mission trips" to Africa at the age of 103, and embarked on a mission to the West Indies at the age of 107, remained in excellent health until earlier this year. He liked to boast that he needed no medications and had kept all his teeth bar one ("the dentist tricked me out of it"). His longevity he attributed to "holding on to the Big Boss upstairs." He was four times married and outlived all his wives; a daughter also predeceased him. Otis Clark, born February 13 1903, died May 22 2012