Septima Clark, Citizenship Education, and Women in the Civil Rights Movement

Civil rights activist Septima Poinsette Clark (1898-1987) is best known for her role in developing the Citizenship Schools. During the 1950s and 1960s, thousands of disenfranchised African Americans passed through Citizenship School classes in which they learned to read and write in order to pass the literacy tests required by southern states to register to vote. This talk focuses on three moments in Clark’s life to show that the roots of the program lay in the organizing tradition forged by black women educators in the segregated South. Given that education had long been perceived as “women’s work,” it also highlights the degree to which the Citizenship Schools represented an important site of black women’s activism and leadership in the Civil Rights Movement. This lecture is made possible by funding from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.