Septima Clark

Septima Clark

Education and civil rights

Educator and civil rights activist who developed literacy and citizenship workshops

Amy French

Image: Tumblr, public domain

1898

Charleston, South Carolina, USA

1987

Educator and Civil Rights Activist

Septima Clark was an educator and civil rights activist who developed literacy and citizenship workshops that were crucial to the campaign for voting rights for African Americans in the south during the 1960s. Clark grew up a strictly segregated society which shaped her outlook on social justice. Because she was African American, her elementary education was not at the same level as white children. A high school opened in 1914 so that she could graduate and take a state examination to start teaching. As an African American, she was barred from teaching in the Charleston public schools, but she could teach on the Sea Islands. Gross disparities represented white and black education. She became politically involved in 1919 when she started actively attending NAACP meetings. She settled in Columbia, South Carolina where she taught at the Booker T. Washington High School. Clark is still remembered as an outstanding educator. She taught there for eighteen years and became more involved in civil rights activism. Clark went on to study with W.E.B. DuBois and earned Bachelor's and Master's degrees. She was an influential figure in the long Civil Rights Movement and one that is too often forgotten.

McFadden, Grace Jordan. "Septima P. Clark and the Struggle for Human Rights." Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers 1941-1965. Ed. Vicki L. Crawford, Jacqueline Anne Rouse, and Barbara Woods. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993): pp. 85–97.

Oral History Interviews with Septima Clark from "Documenting the American South"

1. http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/G-0017/menu.html

2. http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/G-0016/menu.html

University of South Carolina, Septima Clark: http://www.usca.edu/aasc/clark.htm