Trailblazing Woman: Septima Poinsette Clark

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK (1898-1987)

Septima Poinsette Clark was a teacher and civil rights activist who was a fierce advocate for literacy, education, and social progress. Clark is often referred to as the “Mother of the Civil Rights movement” for her efforts in getting African Americans to register to vote.

Born in 1898 in South Carolina, Clark was the daughter of a former slave and a laundry woman. She learned to read and write from a neighbor and attended a private school for Blacks called the Avery Institute. She couldn’t afford to go to college at the time, so took a teachers exam at the age of 18 to allow her to teach.

Clark taught for more than 30 years throughout South Carolina while pursuing her own education during her summer breaks. She became active with the YWCA and participated in a class action suit filed by the NAACP that led to pay equity for Black and white teachers in South Carolina.

In 1956, after 40 years of teaching, Clark’s teaching contract was not renewed when she refused to resign from the NAACP.

During that time, Clark had already begun to work more closely with the Highlander Folk School, a grassroots education center in Tennessee that was dedicated to social justice. After losing her teaching position, Clark was hired full time to run the Highlander’s workshops.

Believing that literacy and political empowerment are inextricably linked, Clark taught people basic literacy skills, their rights and duties as US Citizens, and how to fill out voter registration forms.

Clark went on to run the Citizen Education Program (CEP) through the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and helped to conduct teacher training and develop curricula. She helped to found more than 800 “Citizenship Schools” throughout the Deep South, paving the way for over 50,000 African Americans to register to vote.

Through the CEP, Clark taught some of the most influential activists of the time, including Rosa Parks, who went through one of her workshops a few short months before launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Fannie Lou Hamer.

Clark retired from the SCLC in 1970, though continued to teach workshops for the American Field Service. She was elected to the Charleston, SC school board in 1975 and a year later had her teacher’s pension reinstated after the governor declared that she was unjustly terminated in 1956.

Clark died in 1987 at the age of 89.

Sources: