**Chap­ter Twen­ty-Three: Sep­ti­ma Clark | Charleston, South Car­oli­na, 1898, The Small and the Mighty**

Sep­ti­ma Poin­sette Clark was born to a for­mer­ly enslaved father and a laun­dress in Charleston, South Car­oli­na. Her moth­er, Vic­to­ria, refused to let her chil­dren take domes­tic jobs, which left them vul­ner­a­ble to abuse and exploita­tion. Aim­ing for a bet­ter life, Sep­ti­ma pur­sued a career in teach­ing, a path­way to the Black mid­dle class. The name “Poin­sette” links to her grand­fa­ther, Joel Poin­sett, a sec­re­tary of war known for over­see­ing the Indi­an Removal Act and who intro­duced the poin­set­tia to the U.S.

In Charleston dur­ing the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, Black teach­ers faced severe bar­ri­ers. They were banned from teach­ing in pub­lic schools, forc­ing Sep­ti­ma to accept a posi­tion in a poor rur­al school. The edu­ca­tion­al divide was stark; schools for Black chil­dren received min­i­mal fund­ing com­pared to those for white chil­dren. Often, class­rooms were over­crowd­ed, with teach­ers man­ag­ing up to 100 stu­dents in dis­mal con­di­tions.

Sep­ti­ma began her teach­ing career on Johns Island, where the com­mu­ni­ty had devel­oped a unique Gul­lah cul­ture from their his­to­ry as rice farm­ers dur­ing slav­ery. She observed severe pover­ty, with moth­ers work­ing while their babies were left unat­tend­ed in fields. She began teach­ing in inad­e­quate facil­i­ties, earn­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than her white coun­ter­parts with access to prop­er resources.

Despite hard­ships, Sep­ti­ma remained com­mit­ted to edu­ca­tion and activism. After the NAACP inter­vened, she became one of the first Black teach­ers in Charleston. How­ev­er, her per­son­al life was chal­leng­ing; she expe­ri­enced the trag­ic loss of her infant daugh­ter and lat­er dis­cov­ered her husband’s infi­deli­ty. This led to her becom­ing a sin­gle moth­er, rely­ing on her faith and deter­mi­na­tion to strive for bet­ter edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties for her son and com­mu­ni­ty.

Through­out her life, Sep­ti­ma viewed edu­ca­tion as a path to lib­er­a­tion and self-suf­fi­cien­cy, help­ing many to learn essen­tial skills that com­bat sys­temic dis­en­fran­chise­ment. She devel­oped cul­tur­al­ly rel­e­vant edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als and took action against lit­er­a­cy tests that dis­crim­i­nat­ed against Black vot­ers. Her activism led to the estab­lish­ment of the Cit­i­zen­ship School, which pro­vid­ed lit­er­a­cy and civic edu­ca­tion to empow­er mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties, ulti­mate­ly increas­ing Black vot­er reg­is­tra­tion by 300% in regions served by the schools.

Despite fac­ing police harass­ment for her civ­il rights work, Sep­ti­ma embod­ied resilience, believ­ing that even among chaos, hope for change exist­ed. Her lega­cy high­lights edu­ca­tion as a tool for trans­for­ma­tion, assert­ing that with per­se­ver­ance, even those viewed as ene­mies could change their hearts.