She Who Learns, Teaches: Septima Clark and Black Women Activist Educators, Past, Present, and Future

In the mid-1950s, civil rights educator Septima Clark (1898-1987) developed a citizenship education curriculum that prepared African Americans to pass the literacy tests required by southern states to register to vote. Her larger goal, however, was to equip adult students to wield the power of the ballot more effectively to improve their daily lives. This paper examines the historical foundations of the Citizenship Schools by tracing the evolutions within Clark’s pedagogical philosophy and methodology. Expanding the scope to the 1964 Freedom Schools in Mississippi, it also considers how education-based activism fostered women’s involvement in the movement and in their communities. Finally, it looks forward to present iterations of citizenship/freedom school curriculum in several after-school programs in the resegregated southern landscape.