A portrait I drew on MLK weekend, Septima Poinsette Clark.
“We need to be taught to study rather than believe, to inquire rather than to affirm.” —S. P. Clark
Insightful and pertinent words.
Clark joined the NAACP in 1919 and from there ran a door-to-door petition that successfully convinced her SC school to hire black teachers. In 1945 she would work w/the NAACP and (future Justice) Thurgood Marshall on a case that successfully obtained equal pay for black teachers.
For decades she ran & developed citizenship & community education workshops, instructing attendees how to teach math & literacy to others.
Due to these classes & citizen teachers, more were able to pass the extensive “literacy tests” required to register to vote in Jim Crow South. In 1961 the SCLC took over these classes and made Clark director of them, she developed over 800 classes, spreading education like wildfire.
Though called the Mother of the Movement by MLK for her decades of vital groundwork, Clark was often underappreciated by male activists. It can’t be overstated how important her educational work was & how important that kind of groundwork continues to be for developing social movements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septima_Poinsette_Clark
