Freedom's Teacher: The Life of Septima ClarkIn the mid-1950s, Septima Poinsette Clark (1898–1987), a former public school teacher, developed a citizenship training program that enabled thousands of African Americans to register to vote and then to link the power of the ballot to concrete strategies for individual and communal empowerment. In this vibrantly written biography, Katherine Charron demonstrates Clark’s crucial role — and the role of many black women teachers — in making education a cornerstone of the twentieth-century freedom struggle. Using Clark’s life as a lens, Charron sheds valuable new light on southern black women’s activism in national, state, and judicial politics, from the Progressive Era to the civil rights movement and beyond. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 13 | |
2 Taking Up the Work | 50 |
3 Singing the Blues in the New Reconstruction | 81 |
4 Political Training Grounds | 116 |
5 The Battle Transformed | 149 |
6 Crossing Broad | 179 |
7 Bridging Past and Future | 216 |
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activists adult education African American attended Avery Research Center Bernice Robinson black Carolinians black Charlestonians black community black teachers black women box 9 Carawan chap Charleston County church citizenship education Citizenship School civic civil rights movement Clark Papers College of Charleston Columbia Echo Elizabeth Waring Esau Jenkins federal folder Freedom Hall Interview Highlander Folk School Highlander Papers History interracial interview by author J. W. Waring Papers Jenkins Jim Crow Johns Island July later leaders leadership learned literacy living Myles Horton NAACP NAACP Papers Negro organizing participation Poinsette's political PSTA racial registered Report rural salary school board SCLC Papers segregation Septima Clark Septima Poinsette Clark social South Carolina southern black struggle teaching Thrasher Interview tion University of North University Press Victoria Gray Adams Victoria Poinsette vote voter white supremacists white teachers woman Wood Interview workshop York Young