Here's Where It Gets Interesting - 160. Momentum: The Ripples Made by Ordinary People, Part 15

Episode Date: July 27, 2022

On today’s episode in our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, we learn about the women who gave the movement its backbone. Listen in as Sharon speaks about the Queen of the Civil Rights Movement, Septima Poinsette Clark, and another woman, Bernice Robinson, who, together, were effective teachers and leaders in the Civil Rights community. Septima knew that education was the key to gaining political, economic, and social power and she devoted her activism to improving the education of both Black children and adults. Literacy tests were roadblocks to gaining voting cards, so Septima and Bernice organized citizenship education workshops at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. What did they teach in their classes? Were they successful in helping Black Americans pass their literacy tests? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Whether you're helping that special person take their content up a notch or adding that extra quality to your own shoots, Canon's got you covered. Shop the Level up sales event today at canon.ca. Hello friends, welcome. Welcome to the 15th installment of Momentum, our special series in which we are documenting ordinary Americans' struggle for freedom during the Civil Rights era of the 1950s. Today, I want to tell you about a woman without whom we would have no Martin Luther King, without whom we would have no Rosa Parks. Her name is Septima Poinsett Clark. Let's dive in. I'm Sharon

McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So Podcast. and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Ella Baker is known as the godmother of the civil rights movement and the midwife of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Rosa Parks is known as the mother of the civil rights movement. And Septima Poinsett Clark is regarded as the queen. These three women, along with hundreds of other women, were major leaders and strategists and organizers who helped mold and shape the direction that the civil rights movement would take. the direction that the civil rights movement would take. Septima Poinsett Clark was the daughter of an enslaved man and a woman who did other people's laundry for a living. She was born in the 1890s, and when she was 18, she became a schoolteacher. Wanting to do more for her students, more of her community, she decided to join the NAACP. And when she became a

teacher, segregation was still very strictly enforced, and she was not permitted to teach in Charleston public schools. Like many Black teachers, she was forced to accept a position in a poor rural school that served only African American students. By the 1950s, Septima had been teaching for decades. She and other Black teachers knew it was unfair that they were not allowed to teach in Charleston public schools solely because of the color of their skin, and so they began to protest to win the rights of African Americans to teach wherever they were needed. Clark's father had been enslaved on a plantation, and it was his job to take his master's children to school and to wait outside the school while they were in class. So when Septima's mother and father saw the

condition of the grade school that she was expected to attend as a Black student, they were able to directly compare it to the school that the white children in Charleston were attending. Her parents were enraged about this. They did not want her to attend such a substandard school, and they sent her to the school of a neighbor woman who taught neighborhood children out of her home. Septima always remembered her fifth and sixth grade teacher, whose name was Miss Seabrook. One of the things that I found absolutely delightful was that Miss Seabrook would do things in a way that really made sense to Septima, in a way that helped her learn in a way that she hadn't known was possible. One example of this was

when she was teaching her students geography, Miss Seabrook would give her students both maps and textbooks. And instead of saying, okay, now we're just going to learn the shape of this country and where it is in the world, they would also learn about the country while they were studying its geography. So they would look up things like the state capitals, the important cities, its economic and political status, its climate, its resources, its culture, and they would learn all of this at one time. And Septima noted that this method of teaching geography was so fascinating to her that it ignited a lifelong love of learning, and it made her want to learn more about those other countries. She enjoyed geography so much that she received one of the best grades you could get on the

geography examination when Septima became a teacher herself. One of the things that Septima Clark did was she worked closely with Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP to file a lawsuit in South Carolina to equalize teacher salaries based on certification instead of being based on race. Of course, the idea was that equal certification, equal work, equal pay. And you might recall from a previous episode that Thurgood Marshall filed other lawsuits like this, one of them in Maryland that benefited his mother, who was a teacher. And eventually, one of them in Maryland that benefited his mother who was a teacher. And eventually the NAACP won this lawsuit that Septima Clark was a part of. And her pay went from $780 a year to $4,000 a year. That was the difference in pay between black and white teachers,

pay between black and white teachers, $780 to $4,000 a year. One of the things that Septima said that her father taught her was to strengthen other people's weaknesses and to see that there was something fine and noble in everyone. And I just loved that. I loved this idea that we're here to strengthen each other's weaknesses. And you can absolutely see how Septima took that to heart and used those words as a guiding principle throughout her lifetime. She ended up teaching not just school children, but adults as well. And everyone was welcome at her classes. Everyone was welcome regardless of if they were a 65-year-old man who had been illiterate his entire life, whether they were the brightest child on the block, no matter their status, she made it her mission to strengthen other people's weaknesses.

her mission to strengthen other people's weaknesses. She once famously said that she believed that the only thing anger did was hurt your digestive system. I loved this quote of hers too so much. She said, you know, the measure of a person is how much they develop in their life. Some people slow down in their growth after they become adults, but you never know when a person is going to leap forward or change around completely. I've seen growth like most people don't think is possible. I can even work with my enemies because I know from experience that they might have a change of heart any minute. Oh, I just love it so much. I love it. I can work with my enemies because I know from experience that they might have a change of heart at any minute. Eventually, the Charleston City School Board found out that she was still a member

of the NAACP, and they told her that she needed to keep that quiet because now we are getting in to the era of Brown versus Abortive Education, and membership in the NAACP was very controversial among white parents. They basically said, if you want to continue working in our schools, you need to keep that under the radar. And she refused. And so she was fired from her position as a teacher. She was fired from the work that she had been doing for decades. And she did not take that to mean, well, I guess, woe is me. I guess I'm just going to retire now. No. She used all of her time to devote to her activism. And one of the things that she found most upsetting was that even though Black men and women had the right to vote, they often couldn't. Literacy tests prevented them from being

able to access the polls. Not only could many adult African Americans not read because their parents and great-grandparents were enslaved and it was illegal to teach enslaved people how to read, literacy tests themselves were designed to be unfair. So to test the effects of literacy tests as a deterrent to keep African Americans from voting, a man named William Van Alstine, who was a professor at Duke University, conducted an experiment. He took questions from Alabama's voter literacy test, and he sent them to all of the professors in the United States who were currently teaching constitutional law in America's law schools. He told the professors to answer all of the questions without the aid of anything else. You could not phone a friend. You could not use a book. He wanted it to be much like

people who were taking a literacy test. Those conditions are what he wanted to replicate. 96 law professors sent back their answers, and Van Alstyne found that 70% of the answers returned were incorrect. America's constitutional law professors could not answer the questions correctly most of the time, 70% of the time. Tis the season for shopping, and with Rakuten, it's also the season for stacking up the savings. Use Rakuten to stack cash back at hundreds of stores on top of holiday sales. That's like We'll be right back. Shop with Rakuten and spend more time locating the perfect gift, less time trying promo codes that don't work. Did I mention that Rakuten is super easy to use? Just start your shopping at Rakuten.ca or in the Rakuten app.

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to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. The state of Louisiana's literacy test is one of the most nonsensical things I've ever seen. I'm going to read you a couple of the questions from the state of Louisiana's literacy test. This is an actual test.

This was given to African Americans to determine if they would be allowed to vote. Here are a couple of examples of the types of questions. In the space below, draw three circles, one inside engulfed by the other. Above the letter X, make a small cross. Draw a line through the letter below that comes earliest in the alphabet, and then it has Z, V, S, B, D, M, K, I, T, P, H, C. So you need to draw a line through that. Draw a line through the two letters below that come last in the alphabet, and then it has a slightly different list of letters, but it looks almost the same. Only a couple of letters are different. So it's designed to purposely be tricky. The 10th question says,

in the first circle below, write the last letter of the first word beginning with L. And then it has three circles with the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And I was looking at that and I was like, in the first circle below, right, the last letter of the first word beginning with L, what first word are we talking about? The first word, am I supposed to make up the first word beginning with L? Number 12 says, draw a line from circle two to circle five that will pass below circle two and above circle four. I mean, you can tell these are all logic puzzles. These have nothing to do with being able to vote on a ballot. They have nothing to do with being able to fill in a circle next to your candidate of choice's name. But Septima Clark decided that she was not helpless and she was not

hopeless. She would do something about it. She would use the skills that she had and the resources she had available to create a citizen education program. This education program became one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement. It was Septima Clark that pioneered the link between education and political organizing, especially when it came to voting. She said literacy means liberation. knew that education was the key to gaining political and economic and social power. I've said this many times that if you want to change something, you have to understand how that thing works. If you want to change the political system, you have to understand how the political system works. And that begins with the very foundations of education, including learning how to read. And so she decided to create a series of workshops, citizen education workshops. And she would teach them at a place called the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee.

Highlander Folk School was started by a man named Miles Horton, and it became an important location for civil rights activists to develop real-world skills they would need. If you stop to think about it, where would the descendants of people who were enslaved or people who were formerly enslaved, where would they have developed the skills to learn political organizing? This was a very important location in the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks took classes there little clip from Septima Clark. And this is from an interview from the 1970s. In 1952, a woman from here went to Washington, D.C.

to a conference, childhood education conference. And when she came back, she said that there was a place in Tennessee where blacks and whites could work together on problems. And down here, we couldn't even speak to each other. She also taught a class at the folk school about the United Nations. And at one of these workshops, Rosa Parks was in attendance, and another woman who was actually Septima Clark's cousin was there as well. Her name was Bernice Robinson. And when the workshop was over, Septima asked the participants, what can we do to promote the United Nations in our home communities? And one of the attendees, who was a man named Esau Jenkins, he was from

Johns Island, South Carolina. Septima Clark had taught there for many years. And if you're not familiar, there are many sea islands off the coast of South Carolina, and they have a very rich history and tradition in the African American community. And Esau Jenkins said, well, I don't know about promoting the United Nations, but I will tell you what I am interested in. I need to get my people registered to vote. They got to read a part of the constitution and they don't know how to read. And, oh, I'd like to get a school set up. And so here is Septima Clark's cousin, Bernice Robinson, who was at that workshop. There was another block that was placed in our way. We had to read a section of the South Carolina state constitution in order to be able to vote.

Some people could read and could pass the test, but there were many, many that couldn't. I knew there were people who couldn't read and write. I've been knowing that all my life, but I never felt it was anything anybody could do about it. The Highlander Folk School gave Esau Jenkins a grant to set up a citizenship school on Johns Island in South Carolina. After a number of months of work, Esau Jenkins asked Bernice Robinson to be the teacher. And Bernice was hesitant. She worked in a beauty shop and she was taking care of her sick mother.

The groundwork was set then to getting citizenship classes going. Many of the people on the island worked long hours in the field, so the classes could only be held during those months which they called a lane-by season, which is December, January, and February. Miles Horton of Highlander said to Esau, you find the place and I'll look for funding for the classes. They asked me to teach the class. I said, no, I'll help anybody who is going to teach the class, but I'm not going to teach it. Well, when they said, either you do it or we won't have a class, then of course I couldn't turn it down. But eventually, Bernice agreed. And on the first day of class, she told her students, I'm not going to be the teacher.

We're going to learn together. You're going to teach me something, and maybe there are a few things I might be able to teach you, but I don't consider myself a teacher. I just feel that I'm here to learn with you. We'll all learn things together. And she later said that that attitude that she approached these adult learners with made all the difference, that they didn't view her as this position of authority. They were co-learners. They were there to learn together. And so she asked the students, what do you want to learn? She made a

list of all the things they wanted to learn. And from the list of things that they wanted to learn, she put together a curriculum. And at the end of five months of citizenship school taught by Bernice Robinson, all 14 of Bernice's students received their voter registration certificates and they could all read and write and do arithmetic. Anna Vashteen, I will never forget Anna Vashteen. She couldn't read or write and it was the greatest reward when I had all the names up on the board one night, and I asked them because they picked their names out. So I actually said, I see my name, and she went down and she took the ruler for me,

and she said, that's Anna. That's my first name. And then she went over on the other side, up and down, and she found Vashti, and she said, that's my name. D-A-S-T-I-N-E, Vashti. And goose pimples just came out all over me because that woman couldn't read or write when she came in. She was 65 years old. Within a few years, more than

37 citizenship schools sprung up on the Sea Islands of South Carolina. Students of the citizenship school went on to do things like begin low-income housing projects and credit unions at a nursing home and other key infrastructural items within their communities. Eventually, Septima Clark Citizenship Schools became part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and she moved to Atlanta, where she drove all over the South recruiting teachers for citizenship schools. It's not Bernice Robinson and Septima Clark and Miles Horton

that people tend to write about. But without them, there would have been no momentum. They understood the meaning of the African proverb, I am because we are. We are because I am. Join me next time when we talk about the 686-page report issued by the United States government. And we find out what happened to our friend Thurgood Marshall. I'll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer, Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time.