Black History, Women's History: Septima Clark

As Black History Month ends and Women’s History Month begins, it’s always a special privilege to honor leaders who overlap in both—Black women who did their part to change American history.

- Marian Wright Edelman

As we approach the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement’s Freedom Summer, one of these leaders to know and honor is Mrs. Septima Clark, the woman Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the “Mother of the Movement.” Throughout her long life, Mrs. Clark pioneered literacy and citizenship education for Black Americans, including the Citizenship Schools that helped inspire the 1964 Freedom Schools.

Readers familiar with Brian Lanker’s marvelous photography collection I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America may remember Mrs. Clark as the proud, strong, and beautiful woman with silver braids whose portrait graced the front cover of the original book and captured her indomitable spirit. Mrs. Clark was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1898, the second of eight children and the daughter of a formerly enslaved father. She graduated from Avery Normal Institute in 1916 with a teaching certificate, but because the city of Charleston would not hire Black teachers, she found a job in a rural community on Johns Island, South Carolina.

The white teacher in that community had only three students but was paid $85 a month, while the Black school had two teachers for 132 children, and its two Black teachers were paid a combined salary of $60.

This was the first of many injustices she encountered throughout her long career, and as time went on, she just started speaking out even when others around her would not. As she put it simply years later: “They were afraid, but I wasn’t.”