Septima Clark’s work was never solitary. The Citizenship Schools, the voter registration drives, and the fight for justice were built by a network of courageous women and men who believed that education was the foundation of freedom. These leaders worked alongside Clark to teach a nation to read, write, and rise.
SCLC Education Director
1930 – 2018
Dorothy Foreman Cotton served as Education Director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, where she co-led the Citizenship Education Program directly alongside Septima Clark and Andrew Young throughout the 1960s. Recognized as the …
Civil Rights Pioneer
1913 – 2005
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks had been an active member of the NAACP and a committed organizer long before the Montgomery bus boycott made her a national figure. In the summer of 1955, she attended a two-week workshop on school desegregation at the …
First Citizenship School Teacher
1914 – 1994
Bernice Violanthe Robinson was Septima Clark’s cousin and became the first teacher of the Citizenship Schools on Johns Island, South Carolina in January 1957. A beautician by trade, Robinson had no formal teaching credentials, which Clark saw as an …
Organizer & SNCC Founder
1903 – 1986
Ella Josephine Baker was a tireless organizer who helped shape every major civil rights organization of her era. She co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, served as its executive director, and connected Septima Clark’s …
Voting Rights Activist
1917 – 1977
Fannie Lou Hamer was a Mississippi sharecropper who did not know she had the right to vote until the age of forty-four. In August 1962, she attended a meeting organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was transformed. She became …