Oral history interview with Septima Poinsette Clark, July 25, 1976
Subtitle: interview G-0016, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Contributors: Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd, interviewer; Southern Oral History Program; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project); University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library
Edition: Electronic ed.
Publisher: University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Published: 2006
Place of publication: [Chapel Hill, N.C.]
Language: eng
Subjects: Interviews; African American women civil rights workers; African American women educators; African Americans; Civil rights; Civil rights movements; Race relations; Segregation; Suffrage; Race relations in school management; Social life and customs; Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Other titles: Interview G-0016, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with Septima Poinsette Clark, July 25, 1976; Oral histories of the American South.
Description: Septima Clark was a teacher and citizen's education director for the Highlander Folk School and Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She also worked with the South Carolina Council on Human Relations, YWCA, and American Friends Service Committee. This interview covers her childhood in Charleston, SC, and her family's efforts to survive poverty and racial prejudice. Her mother was a washerwoman reared in Haiti, and her father was a former slave on the Poinsett plantation. Her first job as a teacher on John's Island (1916-19) led to her early activism with the NAACP, her friendship with Judge and Mrs. Waring, and her work with the Charleston YWCA. She married Nerie David Clark as an act of rebellion against her parents, but she chose not to remarry after his early death. She attended college in Columbia, returned to Charleston in 1947, and lobbied for the first local credit union to serve black workers. After she lost her teaching position in 1956 due to her NAACP membership, she worked for the Highlander Folk School encouraging voter registration and education. The SCLC hired her to form education programs, but her plans for increasing community involvement, protecting the labor rights of black teachers, and educating black voters were often ignored because she was female. The interview ends with her thoughts on why she started receiving more recognition for her work in the mid-1970s.
Notes: Title from menu page (viewed on July 21, 2008).

Interview participants: Septima Poinsette Clark, interviewee; Jacquelyn Hall, interviewer.

Duration: 03:46:55.

This electronic edition is part of the UNC-CH digital library, Documenting the American South.  It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.

Text encoded by Mike Millner.  Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers.

Text (HTML and XML/TEI source file) and audio (MP3); 2 files: ca. 378 kilobytes, 415 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series G, Southern women, interview G-0016, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Transcribed by Jean Houston. Original transcript: 109 p.

Funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this interview.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

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