Septima Poinsette Clark (May 3, 1898 – December 15, 1987) was an African American educator and civil rights activist. Clark developed the literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the drive for voting rights and civil rights for African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. Septima Clark's work was commonly under-appreciated by Southern male activists. She became known as the "Queen Mother" or "Grandmother" of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Martin Luther King Jr. commonly referred to Clark as "The Mother of the Movement". Clark's argument for her position in the Civil Rights Movement was one that claimed "knowledge could empower marginalized groups in ways that formal legal equality couldn't."
Clark was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 3, 1898. Her life in Charleston was greatly affected by the era of Reconstruction, as well as power relations during the time. Charleston was strictly segregated and harshly divided by class. Her father, Peter Poinsette, was enslaved at birth on Joel Roberts Poinsett's plantation, called the White House, near Georgetown. Joel Roberts Poinsett was a distinguished US politician of his time and the namesake of the poinsettia plant. Peter was a house servant to Joel and his main task was taking the children to and from school each day. After slavery, Peter found a job working on a ship in the Charleston harbor. During one of his travels, he went to Haiti and it was then that Peter met Victoria, Clark's mother. The couple got married in Jacksonville, Florida, and then moved back to Charleston.
Her mother, Victoria Warren Anderson Poinsette, was born in Charleston but raised in Haiti by her brother, who took her and her two sisters there in 1864. Victoria Poinsette was also enslaved, but vowed to never be anyone's servant. She returned to Charleston after the Civil War and worked as a launderer. She raised her children very strictly, only permitting them to play with other children on one day of the week. She was also determined to make her daughters into ladies, so she told them never to go out without gloves on, never yell, never eat on the street, etc.
Victoria Warren Anderson Poinsette lived in a constant struggle of wanting to improve her social class; she wanted to live in a middle-class society but on a working-class budget. Victoria made it plain to Peter that he was not providing enough for her and their family. Victoria raised her children separated, with the boys having more lenient rules than the girls. The boys could have friends over and play many days of the week, but the girls had to do chores and lessons, every day other than Friday. Clark rebelled against her mother's strictness through never becoming the lady she wished her to be and marrying a man Victoria called a "stranger". Clark remembers only ever being punished by her father when she did not want to attend school; however, Clark's father was not able to write his own name until the later years of his life.
Clark's first educational experience was in 1904 at age six, when she started attending Mary Street School. All Clark did at this school was sit on a set of bleachers with a hundred other six-year-olds, learning nothing. Clark's mother quickly removed her from the school. An elderly woman across the street from their house was teaching girls, so Clark learned to read and write there. Due to Clark's poor financial status, she watched the woman's children every morning and afternoon in return for her tuition. At this time there was not a high school in Charleston for blacks; however, in 1914 a school opened for blacks in 6th, 7th, 8th grade. After sixth grade, she took a test and went on to ninth grade at the Avery Institute. All of the teachers were white women. In 1914, black teachers were hired and this brought much controversy to the city, which Clark later took part in through the NAACP.
Clark graduated from high school in 1916. Due to financial constraints, she was not able to attend college initially, so she took a state examination at the age of eighteen to allow her to teach. As an African American, she was barred from teaching in the Charleston, South Carolina public schools, but was able to find a position teaching in a rural school district, on John's Island, the largest of the Sea Islands. She taught on the islands from 1916 to 1919 at Promise Land School and then returned to Avery from 1919 to 1920. She was able to return to school part-time in Columbia, South Carolina to complete her B.A. at Benedict in 1942 and then she received her M.A. from Hampton. During this time, she taught children during the day and illiterate adults on her own time at night. During this period she developed innovative methods to rapidly teach adults to read and write, based on everyday materials like the Sears catalog.
Clark recalls the gross discrepancies that existed between her school and the white school across the street. Clark's school had 132 students and only one other teacher. As the teaching principal, Clark made $35 per week, while the other teacher made $25. Meanwhile, the white school across the street had only three students, and the teacher who worked there received $85 per week. It was her first-hand experience with these inequalities that led Clark to become an active proponent for pay equalization for teachers. In 1919 her pay equalization work brought her into the movement for civil rights. In an interview with Robert Penn Warren for the book Who Speaks for the Negro?, Clark explains how these experiences with her education, as well as her early experiences with growing up in a racist Charleston and teaching in the slums, prompted her to want to work towards civil rights.
Clark first heard of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) while she was teaching on John's Island from 1916 to 1919. There was no NAACP chapter on John's Island, but a meeting was held in which various preachers came and spoke about what the NAACP was and what exactly it was trying to do. The superintendent was in attendance to collect dues and it was then that she decided to join the organization.
In 1918, Clark returned to Charleston to teach sixth grade at Avery Normal Institute, a private academy for black children. She joined the local branch of the NAACP, and she was guided by artist and branch president Edwin A. Harleston in her early political activity.
Clark led her students around the city, going door-to-door, asking for signatures on a petition to allow black teachers in Charleston's public schools. In a citywide effort involving hundreds of volunteers, she helped garner more than 5,000 signatures of black heads of household to change the law. In 1920 black teachers were permitted in the city's public schools. In 1920, Clark enjoyed the first of many legal victories when blacks were given the right to become principals in Charleston's public schools, under the education board of aldermen of Charleston. In 1945, Clark worked with Thurgood Marshall on a case that was about equal pay for white and black teachers led by NAACP in Columbia, South Carolina.
The late-1940s proved to be a difficult time for Clark as she stood up for the NAACP's aim of equalization to integration against many other members and activists.
While teaching at Avery from 1919 to 1920, Clark met Nerie David Clark. He worked as a warden cook on a submarine in the navy during World War I. In late 1920, she went to teach in McClellanville until 1922. She and Nerie wrote letters back and forth and dated for approximately three years. In 1923, they were married in McClellanville and then shortly moved to Hickory, North Carolina, Nerie's hometown. Clark's mother was disgraced by her marriage. Victoria believed that to marry any man outside of the state is to marry a stranger. She refused to have her in-laws for dinner or for any occasion. The marriage severed Victoria and Septima's relationship.
While living in Hickory with Nerie's family, Clark became aware of the many cultural and ideal differences they had. They grew up in different worlds; a mountain man and a low-country girl. In Hickory, Clark attended the same church as Nerie's family, which was an African Methodist church. She found this church to be much more of a community than her church in Charleston, the United Methodist Church. Throughout Clark's religious journey in life, she found that there are many ways to serve God, rather than only one correct way. Clark got homesick, so they moved back to Charleston, where she taught at Promise Land again from 1926 to 1929.