Katherine Charron will discuss her book Freedom's Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark

Start: 04/05/2012 7:00 pm

Timezone: Etc/GMT-4

Thur 4/5 7pm-8pm

Katherine Mellen Charron will discuss her book Freedom's Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark

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 this vibrantly written biography, Katherine Charron demonstrates Clark's crucial role--and the role of many black women teachers--in making education a cornerstone of the twentieth-century freedom struggle. Using Clark's life as a lens, Charron sheds valuable new light on southern black women's activism in national, state, and judicial politics, from the Progressive Era to the civil rights movement and beyond.

In this vibrantly written biography, Katherine Charron demonstrates Clark's crucial role--and the role of many black women teachers--in making education a cornerstone of the twentieth-century freedom struggle. Using Clark's life as a lens, Charron sheds valuable new light on southern black women's activism in national, state, and judicial politics, from the Progressive Era to the civil rights movement and beyond.

Katherine Mellen Charron is assistant professor of history at North Carolina State University. She is coeditor of William Henry Singleton's Recollections of My Slavery Days.