Black history, women’s history: Septima Clark

(Children’s Defense Fund) – 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. As we approach the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement’s Freedom Summer, one of these leaders to know and honor is Septima Clark, the woman Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the “Mother of the Movement.” Throughout her long life, 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 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. 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...