Tag: african american education

Pamela Grundy: Color and Character

At a time when race and inequality dominate national debates, the story of West Charlotte High School illuminates the possibilities and challenges of using racial and economic desegregation to foster educational equality. Continue Reading Pamela Grundy: Color and Character

Septima Clark, Freedom’s Teacher

It is night. A lone black woman walks through a cornfield in South Carolina. The stars wink above her. Crickets and cicadas grow quiet as she passes and then resume their orchestral humming, now punctuated by the sound of rustling leaves a little farther off. She moves toward an unpainted one-room building. When she gets there, she will have to… Continue Reading Septima Clark, Freedom’s Teacher

Charron Discusses the Life of Septima Clark on the State of Things today

In the mid-1950s, Septima Poinsette Clark (1898-1987), a 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. In Freedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark, Katherine Mellen Charron demonstrates Clark’s crucial role–and the… Continue Reading Charron Discusses the Life of Septima Clark on the State of Things today