Known as a fierce tenants’ rights advocate and the first woman elected to serve as president of Baltimore City Council, Mary Pat Clarke died on Sunday morning, according to sources close to her.

Leaders in City Hall had begun paying homage to Clarke, who most recently retired from City Council in 2020. Councilmember Odette Ramos, Clarke’s successor in her Northeastern Baltimore district, sponsored legislation last year named in her honor that strengthened protections making it easier for renters to purchase the homes they live in. And in August Mayor Brandon Scott unveiled the Mary Pat Clarke Playground near Lake Montebello.

In a statement Sunday afternoon, Scott said Clarke “passed away peacefully this morning surrounded by family after a brief illness.” He described her as a trailblazer, a fighter and an “impeccable public servant.”

“Her deep care for all things Baltimore, especially its people, is why I called her Council President for Life,” Scott said. “I learned so much from her about helping people, especially those in deep need.”

Clarke served 32 intermittent years on City Council, with her first term starting in 1975.

In an interview, Ramos ticked through an array of Clarke’s legislative achievements. In the 1970s, Ramos said, City Council included three people for each district. Clarke, with her husband, Joe, was at the forefront of making sure the Democratic Party tickets for City Council races were diverse, Ramos said, so that Black politicians in the city were running for office and winning.

Clarke was the first to establish a tenant’s first right of refusal in Baltimore, a policy that gives renters a chance to buy the home they are living in when it hits the market, said Ramos, who later strengthened the law as a councilmember. But Clarke fought on an array of issues, from pesticides to zoning law, Ramos added.

Above all else, Ramos stressed Clarke’s gift for mentoring young city councilmembers, and the example she set as the first woman to win a citywide race in Baltimore.

“She paved the way for the rest of us,” Ramos said. “She knew that the work in Baltimore was much bigger than she was, and she made sure that the younger people coming up were going to be OK and know what to do.”

In terms of mentorship, Ramos described Clarke as a master of making sure new lawmakers felt the issues they cared most about were the most important in the city.

“She served well, so it’s a shock and it’s sad,” Ramos said. “But Baltimore wouldn’t be where it is today without her.”]

Some of Clarke’s mentees would go on to become mayor, including Sheila Dixon, who first joined City Council in 1987, the year Clarke rose to president.

But Clarke’s time on the council wasn’t always so flowery. That first year as president, Clarke was targeted by the so-called “dirty dozen,” a cadre of councilmembers who watered down the newfound president’s ability to make committee appointments, Dixon said.

“Despite the fact that they tried to take her power away, she was still focused on teaching new council people the legislative process,” Dixon said. “It didn’t stop her from being a leader.”

Clarke’s resilience inspired Dixon, who took many lessons from the legendary Baltimore lawmaker. The most valuable, she said, was Clarke’s dedication to “constituent services,” or, put plainly: helping people, whether they called her, wrote her an email or stopped her in the street.

Dixon recalled Clarke’s driver, a retiree named Bill, who would take her across the city on various missions, either politically oriented or constituent focused. She estimated that Clarke is one of the only Baltimore politicians who, if you asked random people on the street in Baltimore, their name would ring a bell.

“No matter where you went, people knew who Mary Pat was,” Dixon said. “That’s not the case for most elected officials.”

Scott, the mayor, shared a similar sentiment, posting on his Instagram account: “Anywhere you go in this city, there is someone with a story about how Mary Pat helped them.”

“She was one of the first people to welcome me to City Hall when I arrived and poured into me consistently, while showing me how to serve from the ground up,” Scott wrote. “Baltimore is a better place because she lived here and dedicated her life to serving all of us, and for that, we as a city are eternally grateful.”

Zeke Cohen, City Council president, said Clarke “defines what it means to be a public servant in Baltimore.”

“Her decades of selfless service to our city yielded incredible results for children, workers and families,” Cohen said in a statement. “She was an uncompromising moral voice.”

Cohen said Clarke was a close personal friend who gave up her chairmanship of the education committee to give it to Cohen when he joined City Council. The two worked closely on several policies to help Baltimore’s children, Cohen added.

“I am saddened that some of my new colleagues will not benefit from her wisdom,” Cohen said. “But we all benefit from the life she lived and the gifts she poured into us.”

Baltimore Banner reporter Emily Opilo contributed to this article.