feature: septima poinsette clark: the queen mother of the civil rights movement

“I just tried to create a little chaos. Chaos is a good thing. God created the whole world out of it. Change is what comes of it.” – Septima Poinsette Clark
In 1955, on the eve of her famous act of defiance, Rosa Parks attended a citizenship workshop led by Septima Poinsette Clark. These workshops were designed to train young activists, and train people in their rights as citizens. Parks said of Septima, “At that time I was very nervous, very troubled in my mind about the events that were occurring in Montgomery. But then I had the chance to work with Septima. She was such a calm and dedicated person in the midst of all that danger. I thought, ‘If I could only catch some of her spirit.’ I wanted to have the courage to accomplish the kinds of things that she had been doing for years.”

By Nathan Leigh, AFROPUNK Contributor

By that point, Septima Clark had been working as a Civil Rights activist for some 35 years. The daughter of a former slave and a Hatian immigrant, Septima believed strongly in the power of education. Though her father was unable to write his own name until late in life, he pushed his daughters to become educated. Growing up in Charleston, South Carolina at the turn of the century, the options for a decent education were limited, but the Clarks were dedicated. Septima paid for a private education by watching her teacher’s children after school, and at 18 became a teacher herself.

In segregated Charleston, it was illegal for black women to teach in public schools, so Septima Clark got a job teaching at nearby John’s Island. She worked with children during the day, and adults at night, teaching literacy to former slaves and their children. She created an innovative curriculum focused on teaching adults to read every day materials, believing that literacy and an understanding of their rights as citizens was the key to achieving equality.

Septima Clark first heard about the NAACP in 1919, when preachers came to John’s Island to explain the organization’s mission. Though there was no local chapter, Septima joined the organization and soon moved back to Charleston to become more active. She began teaching at her former middle school, the Avery Normal Institute, a private school for black children. With the Charleston NAACP, Clark was instrumental in a 1920 legal victory that got black teachers the right to teach in Charleston public schools. She and her students later went door to door collecting signatures for a petition to allow a black principal at Avery Normal Institute.

Septima moved to Columbia, South Carolina with husband Nerie David Clark. She worked at Booker T. Washington High School, whose principal actively sought out the most talented black educators from around the country. During her summers off, Septima Clark would attend classes at Columbia University in New York, Benedict College, Hampton Institute, and Atlanta University, where she personally studied under the immortal W.E.B. Du Bois. She earned a BA from Columbia, and Benedict Collage, and a master’s from Hampton.

Throughout her teaching career at Booker T. Washington, Clark continued to be active in the NAACP, focusing particularly on achieving equal rights for educators. In 1947, she moved back to Charleston to care for her mother after a stroke. She took another teaching post in Charleston, but in 1956, South Carolina passed a law making it illegal for employees of the state to have membership in Civil Rights groups. Septima Clark, by then a 35 year veteran activist for the NAACP, refused to split from the group and was fired.

She soon relocated to Tennessee, where she took a job at the Highlander Folk School. Clark had been leading workshops at the Highlander school for a number of years in the summer. This was where Rosa Parks first encountered the venerable educator. At Highlander, Septima Clark became the director of the Highlander’s Citizenship School. The Citizenship School helped teach adults reading, writing, and basic math, in addition to the skills needed to pass the literacy tests that were used as a way of segregating the vote.

Clark continued at Highlander until 1961, when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference took over the Citizenship School. Septima Clark became the director of education at the SCLC, running over 800 citizenship schools based on the model she helped create. In 10 years, the Citizenship Schools trained over 10,000 members of the community. She continued at the SCLC until retiring at 72 in 1970. After retiring from the SCLC, she served two terms on the Charleston County School Board, continuing her twin passion for education and social justice until her death at 89 in 1987.

The legacy Septima Poinsette Clark left behind is often understated. Fittingly, she was the keynote speaker at the National Organization of Women’s first convention, delivering a speech on “The Need of Women Challenging Male Dominance.” Her lifelong commitment to the struggle for equality through education made won her many awards, including a Living Legacy Award from President Jimmy Carter in 1979, though she is rarely spoken about when we talk about the Civil Rights Movement of the 50’s and 60’s. Nonetheless, she has been appropriately credited as the “Grandmother,” and maybe most appropriately, “Queen Mother” of the Civil Rights Movement.

“The greatest evil in our country today is not racism, but ignorance. I believe unconditionally in the ability of people to respond when they are told the truth. We need to be taught to study rather than to believe, to inquire rather than to affirm.”