Freedom's Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark - Enhanced E-book - by Katherin Mellen CharronUNC Press and the Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement project (LCRM) are thrilled to announce that an enhanced e-book is now available for Feedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark, by Katherine Mellen Charron.

Produced in collaboration with the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston, the enhanced e-book features nearly 100 primary-source items, including photographs, documents, letters, newspaper clippings, and 60 audio excerpts from oral-history interviews with 15 individuals—including Clark herself—each embedded in the narrative where it will be most meaningful.

Learn more about it and watch a video demonstration here:



First published in 2009, this biography tells the story of civil rights activist Septima Poinsette Clark (1898-1987), who developed a citizenship education program that enabled tens of thousands of African Americans to register to vote and to link the power of the ballot to concrete strategies for individual and communal empowerment.

Clark, who began her own teaching career in 1916, grounded her approach in the philosophy and practice of southern black activist educators in the decades leading up to the 1950s and 1960s, and then trained a committed cadre of black women to lead this grassroots literacy revolution in community stores, beauty shops, and churches throughout the South. In this engaging biography, Katherine Charron tells the story of Clark, from her coming of age in the South Carolina lowcountry to her activism with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the movement’s heyday.

Read more about the project at the LCRM blog.

You can purchase the enhanced e-book for $9.99. It is available for the Barnes & Noble Nook and the iPhone and iPad via Amazon’s Kindle app. Links to both can be found at our book page.