By highlighting the link between literacy and political empowerment, educator and activist Septima Poinsette Clark changed the landscape of education and equality for Black people in Charleston, South Carolina and across the U.S. during the Jim Crow era. Although she’s not a household name, Clark’s work was crucial to the Civil Rights Movement’s development.
Clark’s 30 years of teaching began soon after she graduated from secondary school in 1916. She taught at a Black school on Johns Island in South Carolina, as Black educators were not allowed to work in the Charleston public school system. This discriminatory regulation inspired her first act of organized resistance– gathering signatures to petition for Black educators’ employment in public schools.
Clark’s most influential work took place with the creation of citizenship schools in the late 1950s, which helped her explore what information was crucial for citizens to know in order to be productive members of society. Designed for people of voting age, these citizenship schools taught practical, political and economic literacy.
“They focused on overcoming illiteracy to strengthen Black electoral power,” said Kristen Duncan, Ph.D. during a presentation at the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education. “There was an interactive way of teaching that built upon student culture and an explicitly political approach that linked gaining knowledge to collective efforts of overcoming racism.”
Her efforts in these programs effectively combatted the disenfranchisement Black voters faced and prepared them for any obstacles that may come with registration– such as literacy tests. She taught many of the young generation that propelled the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, making her work a cornerstone to the fight against racism.
Her dedication to teaching political literacy fortified the movement challenging the systemic oppression against Black Americans, forever shaping the fight for justice.
“I believe unconditionally in the ability of people to respond when they are told the truth,” Clark famously said. “We need to be taught to study rather than believe, to inquire rather than to affirm.”