Clarence P. McIntosh
Breaking Barriers
A grandson of one of Lake Forest’s earliest Black residents, Civil War veteran Henry McIntosh, Clarence P. McIntosh made the most of his opportunities. A standout athlete and student at Lake Forest High School, he graduated amidst World War II. McIntosh entered an officer training program and became one of the Navy’s first Black officers. He served on the USS Mason, the only U.S. warship to sail with a Black crew during the war.
Ebony magazine, December 1964
Following his naval career, Clarence McIntosh became a trailblazer in the television studio as a producer for Chicago’s public station, WTTW. He won an Emmy for the innovative 1970s soap opera “Birds of an Iron Feather.” The show, named for a Frederick Douglass quote, sought to portray the everyday lives of Black families in Chicago so that African American audiences could see themselves on television.
Clarence McIntosh and Florence Curtis Fitzgerald were married in Crown Point, Indiana on February 10, 1951. The marriage did not last.
McIntosh also broke barriers in his personal life. According to records and correspondence, in the 1950s he had a brief marriage with Florence Curtis Fitzgerald, a divorced white Lake Forest socialite. This interracial relationship proved shocking enough that newspapers brought it up decades later. McIntosh went on to remarry and had four children with his wife Barbara.
Twenty years later, Women's Wear Daily (and the Chicago Tribune reprinted) an article about Lake Forest that misrepresented the facts of the story; it was so egregious that a few days later they printed an extensive correction.
Clarence McIntosh and wife Barbara Annette Dailey