Overview

This book features the power of education and women's activism in the long civil rights movement. Septima Poinsette Clark's gift to the civil rights movement was education. In the mid-1950s, this former public school teacher developed a citizenship training program that enabled thousands of African Americans to register to vote and then to link the power of the ballot to concrete strategies for individual and communal empowerment. This vibrantly written biography places Clark (1898-1987) in a long tradition of southern African American activist educators, women who spent their lives teaching citizenship by helping people to help themselves. """"Freedom's Teacher"""" traces Clark's life from her earliest years as a student, teacher, and community member in rural and urban South Carolina to her increasing radicalization as an activist following World War II, highlighting how Clark brought her life's work to bear on the civil rights movement. Katherine Mellen Charron's engaging portrait demonstrates Clark's crucial role - and the role of many black women teachers - in making education a cornerstone of the twentieth-century freedom struggle. Drawing on autobiographies and memoirs by fellow black educators, state educational records, papers from civil rights organizations, and oral histories, Charron argues that the schoolhouse served as an important institutional base for the movement. Clark's program also fostered participation from grassroots southern black women, affording them the opportunity to link their personal concerns to their political involvement on the community's behalf. Using Clark's life as a lens, Charron sheds valuable new light on southern black women's activism in national, state, and judicial politics, from the Progressive Era to the civil rights movement and beyond.

Full Product Details

9780807833322

Table of Contents

Reviews

Freedom's Teacher is the product of a 12-year research journey, the result of which is extensive and meticulously organized. . . . Charron vividly brings [Clark's] life and times to the fore. <br>- The Charleston Post and Courier

This biography will enlighten anyone interested in the black freedom struggle, the classic phase of the civil rights movement, and women's history.--Tennessee Historical Review The crucial role played by Septima Poinsette Clark and other African-American women has been written back into the story of the civil rights movement.--The Pilot More than a biography.--Oral History Review In Charron's capable hands, [Septima] Clark's life has at long last received the full-length attention it deserves.--Oral History Review Deeply researched and engaging. . . . Charron's richly suggestive biography of Septima Clark will surely stimulate more work on the African American women who made the possibilities of the movement realities.--Journal of American History Charron's stunning, eminently readable writing style pulls the reader in from the outset with opening lines that approach synesthesia. . . . Any biographers would find this work amazing and a worthy addition to their libraries. Any historian of the civil rights movements would be well suited to pick this up as background and context for understanding a leader and pioneer. A general reader would not be put off by academic prose or overreliance on either citations or notations.--H-Net Reviews As a lyrical and moving account of an influential activist, this biography is unrivaled.--Journal of American Studies A carefully researched and beautifully written study that absorbs the reader from the first paragraph. . . . An engaging synthesis of the major events and personalities of twentieth-century South Carolina. . . . An essential text for students of educational history, women's history, and the civil rights movement.--North Carolina Historical Review A beautifully written and meticulously researched biography. . . . An essential addition to the growing number of biographies of black women educators and activists....It challenges us to broaden our understanding of the development of the civil rights era, the definition of civil rights leadership, and the role of education in laying the foundation for protest and social justice in the twentieth century.--American Historical Review [In this] comprehensive and thoroughly engrossing biography. . . . Katherine Charron artfully presents the full breadth of the life and career of Septima Clark.--Journal of African American History [A] deft narrative. . . . A compelling story about someone whose name may not be included as a leader in the civil rights movement but certainly should be.--Journal of Southern History Freedom's Teacher is the product of a 12-year research journey, the result of which is extensive and meticulously organized. . . . Charron vividly brings [Clark's] life and times to the fore.--The Charleston Post and Courier

Deeply researched and engaging. . . . Charron's richly suggestive biography of Septima Clark will surely stimulate more work on the African American women who made the possibilities of the movement realities. <br>- Journal of American History

Author Information

Katherine Mellen Charron is assistant professor of history at North Carolina State University. She is coeditor of William Henry Singleton's Recollections of My Slavery Days.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available