Reatha Clark King
Reatha Belle Clark King (born April 11, 1938) is an American chemist, the former vice president of the General Mills Corporation; and the former president, executive director, and chairman of the board of trustees of the General Mills Foundation, the philanthropic foundation of General Mills, Inc. Early life and education Reatha Belle Clark was born in Pavo, Georgia, United States on April 11, 1938. Her father, Willie B. Clark, was a sharecropper, and her mother, Ola Mae Watts Campbell, had only a third-grade education. Reatha Clark began elementary school in a one-room school for grades 1–7, at Mt. Zion Baptist, a colored church, where she was taught by Florence Frazier. Later, she attended school in Coolidge, Georgia, and high school in Moultrie, Georgia. When she graduated from Moultrie High School for Negro Youth in 1954, the same year that Brown v. Board of Education determined segregated schools were illegal, Clark was the valedictorian of her class. Clark was recruited to attend Clark College in Atlanta, where she initially enrolled as a home economics major. She was encouraged to become a research chemist by the head of the chemistry department there, Alfred Spriggs. King earned a bachelor of science degree in