March 2023 - “Literacy is Liberation"
Septima Poinsette Clark defied the odds. Her father, Peter Poinsette, was born enslaved. She was born in 1898 in the heart of the Jim Crow South where the Civil War began - Charleston, South Carolina. She yearned to be a teacher in that city where for decades no Black people were allowed to teach. When finally able to teach in the city’s public schools, Clark was fired by the school board for being a member of the NAACP.
Nevertheless, she persisted. Eventually, in 1975, she was elected to the Charleston City School Board. In 1982 she was awarded South Carolina’s highest civilian honor, the Order of the Palmetto. Today, in the city you can drive to via the Septima P. Clark Parkway, a theatrical production about her life is being staged. A review of the play suggests that, “just as the name Septima Clark dignifies the entrance to Charleston, her story serves as a direct path to entering Charleston for its role in our country’s complex history. Anyone seeking their bearings in this city or this country, for that matter, would do well to start with Septima.”
Clark deserves such posthumous fame for her role in the Civil Rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. called her “the mother of the movement.” Navigating intersectionality well before the term was coined, Clark overcame the sexist attitudes of King, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and others. Clark saw this as “one of the greatest weaknesses of the civil rights movement.” She joined the movement through what she called her “first ‘radical’ job” alongside NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall. They worked to assure that Black teachers were paid the same as white teachers. Later she was hired as Director of Education for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, becoming the first woman on the SCLC board.
But her greatest impact might have been as a teacher. In her years working in Charleston schools she developed ways to teach reading and math by addressing challenges people had to face every day, like reading street signs and double-checking the numbers on a bill of sale. She brought that practical approach to the Highlander Folk School founded in 1932 by Myles Horton. There, as Director of Workshops, she mixed this practical approach with a commitment to student-led education. Drawing from John Dewey’s pragmatism and Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, Clark engaged her students and bolstered their confidence through self-esteem, cultural pride, and civic education. This approach helped thousands of activists, including Rosa Parks, Ella Baker, and John Lewis, sharpen their skills.
Clark became the driving force for Citizenship Schools that she and her cousin, Bernice Robinson, helped spread throughout the south. Though they often had to meet secretly to avoid racist violence, these schools reached 25,000 students by 1965, according to Clark. Students learned about the Constitution, civic procedures, and – most importantly - voting rights. The knowledge proliferated and, thanks to these schools, by 1970 over two million previously disenfranchised African Americans registered to vote.
Today, as reactionary politicians disenfranchise citizens of color and purge schools of civil rights history, let’s renew the connection between activism and education. Our democracy depends on engaged, enlightened citizens. Septima Poinsette Clark was right in saying, “literacy is liberation.”
Further Action:
1) Honor the commitment to education demonstrated by Septima’s mother and father. Both instilled in her a respect for learning. They moved her out of a school where she learned little and sacrificed to get her a more personal and intensive education. To pay for the education, Septima’s mother watched the teacher's children every day. Whether you have children in public school or not, support your local schools by promoting educational budgets or through your local PTA.
2) Support voting rights organizations, such as the League of Women Voters, Rock the Vote, Vote Smart, and the Center for Common Ground’s Reclaim our Vote efforts.
3) Get to know the Highlander Center and its Septima Clark Learning Center. Highlander manages to find the fertile pedagogical middle ground between student-led education and teacher-led offering of new ideas and information.
4) Check out a short interview with Dr. Patricia Dockery and then go here to view the April 1, 3PM or 7PM livestream of her theatrical production - "Septima Poinsette Clark: Making the Impossible Possible."
5) Combine your activism with compassion. Clark epitomized the nonviolent philosophy that animated the civil rights movement. In her biography, she wrote, “…hating people, bearing hate in your heart, even though you may feel that you have been ill-treated, never accomplishes anything good…Hate is only a canker that destroys.”