An African American educator nicknamed the “mother of the civil rights movement,” she founded the Citizenship Schools in the segregationist South to teach Black people to read and help them register to vote.
Septima Clark
Septima Poinsette Clark
8 min read
Frequently asked questions
Famous Quotes
« I was on the executive staff of SCLC, but theologically and politically I was not in line with it.»
« Education is the key to the ballot box.»
Key Facts
- 1898: born in Charleston, South Carolina
- 1961: founded the Citizenship Schools with the SCLC to teach literacy to Black Southerners and facilitate their voter registration
- 1956: fired from her teaching position in Charleston for her membership in the NAACP
- 1979: received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Jimmy Carter
- 1987: died in Charleston after a lifetime dedicated to education and civil rights
Works & Achievements
A network of civic literacy schools founded by Clark on Johns Island, then expanded throughout the South under the SCLC. The program enabled thousands of Black adults to learn to read and register to vote, forming the organizational backbone of the civil rights movement.
Clark's first autobiographical account, tracing her journey as a schoolteacher and her civic commitment. An essential work for understanding grassroots education in the segregated South of the 1950s.
Clark designed and led the training of hundreds of local grassroots educators drawn from rural Black communities. This bottom-up approach — training ordinary people rather than outside experts — was a major pedagogical innovation of the movement.
A collection of interviews conducted by Cynthia Stokes Brown, in which Clark reflects on her entire life as an activist. An essential historical source, this book stands as one of the last direct testimonies from her generation.
Anecdotes
In 1956, South Carolina passed a law barring state employees from belonging to the NAACP. Septima Clark had been teaching for forty years; she refused to leave the organization and was immediately dismissed, losing her salary and her pension. Far from being discouraged, she said that this injustice had “given her back her freedom.”
In 1957, Clark opened the first Citizenship School in a cooperative on Johns Island, an isolated island in South Carolina where many adult residents could neither read nor write. She chose her niece Bernice Robinson as the teacher, explaining that an untrained instructor would approach students without condescension. Within a few months, dozens of Black adults learned to read the Constitution in order to register to vote.
Martin Luther King Jr. nicknamed her “the mother of the movement” and acknowledged that without the civic literacy program Clark organized, the major mobilizations of the 1960s would not have had the same popular base. Yet when the 1963 March on Washington was being organized, women — including Clark — were excluded from the official speeches, an exclusion she publicly denounced for the rest of her life.
In the early 1960s, the Citizenship Schools program was incorporated into the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Clark trained hundreds of local educators across the Southern states: in less than ten years, more than ten thousand Black adults had learned to read and registered to vote through the network she coordinated.
In 1982, South Carolina — the state that had dismissed her twenty-six years earlier — awarded her the Order of the Palmetto, the state’s highest civilian honor. Clark, then 84 years old, saw it not as a personal rehabilitation but as proof that grassroots education can bring lasting change to a society.
Primary Sources
I was determined to get the people of Johns Island to read and write, because I knew that without literacy they could never vote, and without the vote they would remain powerless.
I have great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift.
The Citizenship Schools are not my program. They belong to the communities that built them, one by one, county by county, state by state.
When a person learns to sign his own name instead of making an X, something happens inside of him that gives him a new sense of dignity and power.
Key Places
Septima Clark's hometown, shaped by a long history of slavery. It is here that she grew up, received her education, and began her career as a teacher in segregated schools.
A rural and isolated island where Clark opened the first Citizenship School in 1957, in the back room of a cooperative store. This place marks the starting point of a civic literacy movement that would spread across the entire South.
An anti-segregationist training center founded by Myles Horton, where Clark became director of education. Rosa Parks also participated there; it is here that the Citizenship Schools program was formalized and disseminated.
When the SCLC took over the Citizenship Schools program in 1961, Clark moved to Atlanta to coordinate the training of hundreds of local educators throughout the segregated South.
The state capital where Clark taught in public schools for several years and actively campaigned within the NAACP, before being dismissed in 1956 for that membership.
Typical Objects
Clark and her collaborators design manuals tailored to rural adults, drawing texts from the Constitution and the ballot. These handcrafted booklets are at the heart of every Citizenship School.
Learning to fill out this form independently is the concrete goal of every class. Clark has her students memorize the exact legal wording on the form so they can pass the tests imposed by white county clerks.
In cooperatives, kitchens, and church back rooms converted into classrooms, the blackboard is the central tool. Clark insists that classes be held in spaces familiar to the community, not in institutional buildings.
In the rural Black communities of the South, the Bible is often the only book found in homes. Clark uses it as a first reading resource, allowing students to build on texts they already know by heart.
Clark distributes inexpensive copies of the Constitution so that learners can practice reading the very texts that establish their rights. Reading the Constitution is at once a practical act and a political one.
For decades, Clark maintains a network of local educators by mail. Her letters provide teaching guidance, encourage local organizers, and document the progress of each group.
School Curriculum
Vocabulary & Tags
Key Vocabulary
Daily Life
Morning
Clark rises early, often before dawn, to prepare her lessons or write correspondence with local trainers scattered across the South. In the 1950s on Johns Island, she sometimes travels long distances on foot or by car over rutted roads to reach the most isolated families.
Afternoon
Citizenship School classes are often held in the afternoon or evening, after students' agricultural workday. Clark observes, corrects, encourages; she insists that classes be interactive and that students immediately connect what they learn to their concrete lives — filling out a contract, reading a ballot.
Evening
In the evening, Clark organizes community meetings, prepares training sessions for future teachers, or responds to her voluminous mail. She meticulously documents the groups' progress to convince the SCLC and donors of the program's effectiveness.
Food
From a modest family in the rural South, Clark eats traditional African American cuisine: rice, beans, garden vegetables, chicken. During her years of activism, she often shares meals with the families she visits, a deliberate gesture of solidarity and respect.
Clothing
Clark dresses modestly but carefully — printed dresses, hats on Sundays at church. She is determined to project an image of dignity in a context where Black people were constantly humiliated; dressing properly was also an act of symbolic resistance.
Housing
She lives in modest homes, often in segregated Black neighborhoods. On Johns Island, she sometimes shares housing with local families. In Atlanta with the SCLC, she occupies a simple apartment; she has never sought material comfort, reinvesting her meager resources into her work.
Historical Timeline
Period Vocabulary
Liens externes & ressources
Références
Œuvres
Programme des Citizenship Schools
1957
Echo in My Soul (autobiographie)
1962
Programme de formation des formateurs de la SCLC
1961-1970
Ready from Within: Septima Clark and the Civil Rights Movement
1986
