Septima Poinsette Clark: Educator, activist and ‘Mother of the Movement’

Septima Poinsette Clark, daughter of a former slave, teacher and civil rights worker, is pictured holding an award in 1974. (AP Photo)

By Jessica Dortch
AFRO News Editor

Later deemed “the mother of the movement,” Septima Poinsette Clark was born in Charleston, S.C. to a laundry woman and former slave. Clark dedicated her life to educating the Black community and advancing African Americans through literacy and leadership. 

After finishing high school in the early 1900s, she had hopes of attending college but could not afford it. And, unfortunately, as an African American, Clark was not permitted to teach at any public schools in her hometown. Instead, she took the state’s teaching exam so that she could teach in rural areas across the state and later accepted her first professional teaching position in Johns Island, S.C. 

The injustices that Clark edured prompted her to advocate for change. As an educator, Clark saw, first-hand, the difference in Black teachers’ salaries compared to those of White teachers. The conditions of the schools could not be compared. And Blacks were permitted to teach at only a few schools in the entire state of South Carolina.  

In 1919, Clark traded in her pencils for picket signs. She left Johns Island to campaign for a law allowing Blacks to teach at Charleston public schools, which was eventually passed in 1920. Later that same year, Septima Poinsette would marry Navy cook Nerie Clark and find herself widowed five years later when he died of kidney failure. 

Again, when faced with a difficult situation, Clark thrusted herself deeper into her work. She relocated to the state’s capital, Columbia, S.C., where she continued to teach and advocate for the community by joining the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). 

She was passionate about education and justice. However, Clark, herself, did not have a formal college degree. During her summer breaks, she would focus on pursuing her own education, studying under some of the most powerful Black minds like W.E.B. DuBois. In 1942, she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Benedict College and went on to earn a Master of Arts degree from Hampton Institute, now Hampton University. 

Her passion for education and disdain for injustice are what led to her influence on  legislation that was pivotal for future Black educators.Clark worked with the NAACP and legendary attorney Thurgood Marshall to provide equal pay for Black teachers. In an interview with Jacquelyn Hall on July 25,1976, Clark explained that in Johns Island, Edwin Halston was the president of the local NAACP chapter. He organized a meeting, which Clark attended, outlining how they were going to make a change. “…We got to the place where we felt that we needed to have Black teachers teaching in the schools, because that was quite an injustice,” Clark said in the interview. 

As an act of resistance to the progression of the NAACP, the state of South Carolina banned state employees, which included teachers, from participating in civil rights organizations. Instead of denouncing the NAACP, Clark stood her ground, which led to her ultimately being fired from the South Carolina school system.   

Clark was hired in Tennessee where she conducted “citizen workshops” centered on literacy, the law and voter information. Rosa Parks attended one of her workshops shortly before her involvement in the Montgomery bus boycott. In 1961, Clark’s citizen workshops became the model for what would be the Citizen Education Program, with none other than Clark as its director of education and teaching. 

Less than a decade later, Clark retired from her position, and in 1975 she was elected to the Charleston County School Board where she would serve two terms. In 1976, South Carolina granted Clark the teacher’s pension and back pay she fought for since she was unjustly fired in 1956. 

Under Clark, about 800 citizenship schools were created, and many Blacks were elected to Congress for the first time since Reconstruction; largely because of the school’s voter education program. In 1979 President Jimmy Carter honored Clark with the Living Legacy Award.