Septima Poinsette Clark
May 3, 1898 – December 1987
“Grandmother of the American Civil Rights Movement”
Founder of the Citizenship Schools.
She was a pioneer for the civil rights movement and is to referred to as the “Mother of the Movement” as per Dr. King statement. Her education is as the following a B.A.degree from Benedict College, Columbia, Sc and a Master’s Degree from Hampton Virginia Institute which is known today as Hampton University.
Septima was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1898 which was a segregated area during the time of Reconstruction. Her parents were Peter Poinsette and Victoria Warren Anderson Poinsette an Hatian. She was raised in a very strict home.
In her early years of education she was taught to read and write by a neighbor. Septima did graduate high school and later attended college and universities to attain her degrees.
Septima played an important role in the history of blacks in America for the voting rights of African Americans. In 1920 While teaching in Charleston she worked with the NAACP to gather petitions allowing blacks to serve as principal in Charleston Schools. The signed petitions resulted in the first ever elected black principal in Charleston.
She married Nerie David Clark After three years of dating. He was a warden cook on a submarine in the navy during World War I.
Her mother did not approve of the match because she did not know his family. Clark’s choice to marry a stranger also had broader social consequences in Charleston. Despite the fact that she was a teacher, one of the most respectable professions among black women, a sailor’s wife would not have been invited to gatherings hosted by the city’s prominent African American families.
In 1921, the couple’s first-born child, a daughter, died of an unnoticed birth defect. Devastated and alone while her husband was at sea, Clark later confessed that she walked to a pier facing the Cooper River and considered ending her life. “I felt I was being punished for having disobeyed my mother,” she observed. “I thought what I had done was against the will of God, according to the religious laws that I learned, and I felt very strongly about that.” Fortunately, Victoria Poinsette sent one of her sons to find his sister and bring her back home, though according to Clark, “she never forgave me.” This painful time in Clark’s life illuminates not only her struggles, but also the intensely personal reasons for her abiding concerns with high black infant mortality rates in the South, and her advocacy for women’s health education from the 1920s forward. The Clarks had another child, a son, in February 1925, but that December Clark’s husband Nerie died of a kidney ailment. Following another tragedy, Clark struggled to rear their son, Nerie Clark Jr., by herself as a widowed mother, and eventually decided to send him to live with his paternal grandparents in Hickory.
Clark family reunion in North Carolina, Septima P. Clark Papers, courtesy of the Avery Research Center.
Septima is national known for establishing the “Citizenship Schools” teaching reading to adults throughout the Deep South, in hopes of carrying on a tradition. The establishment of this school developed from Septima Clark teaching throughout the south. The school was seen as a support for the movement of nonviolent civil rights actions and demonstrations.
During her years working with the NAACP she also worked with various other organizations such as the Tuberculosis Association and the Charleston Health department. She was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. She retired from active with the SCLC I 1970.
In 1970 she was award the Martin Luther King Jr. award. Then President Jimmy Carter in 1979 presented Septima the Living Legacy Award. Her oral recollection lifelong Autobiography Ready From Within won the American Book Award. She also received the highest award from the SCLC which was the Drum Major for Justice Award in 1987.
Septima P. Clark Passed away on December 15, 1987. She is buried at Old Bethel United Methodist church Cemetery in Charleston, South Carolina.
Such a great leader and pioneer who led a path of education for all.
n 1978, Clark was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters by the College of Charleston. U.S. President Jimmy Carter awarded Clark a Living Legacy Award in 1979. In 1987, her second autobiography, Ready from Within: Septima Clark and the Civil Rights Movement (Wild Trees Press, 1986) won the American Book Award.
Septima P. Clark died December 15, 1987. In a eulogy presented at the funeral, the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) described the importance of Clark’s work and her relationship to the SCLC. Reverend Joseph Lowery asserted that “her courageous and pioneering efforts in the area of citizenship education and interracial cooperation” won her SCLC’s highest award, the Drum Major for Justice Award. She is buried at Old Bethel United Methodist Church Cemetery in Charleston, South Carolina.
Clark had major relations to other black activists of the Civil Rights Movement, such as Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois. Washington and Clark both emphasized the importance of self-improvement before the importance of institutional reforms. DuBois and Clark agreed on the emphasis of education as the most important approach to the civil rights movement.
Septima Clark Public Charter School in Washington, DC, is named in her honor. Septima P. Clark Parkway (also known as the Septima P. Clark Expressway) and Septima P. Clark Memorial Park in Charleston, SC, are named in her honor.
Minor planet 6238 Septimaclark, discovered by Eleanor Helin is named in her honor. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 8 November 2019 (M.P.C. 117229).