1. Laying the Groundwork for Freedom:
Septima Clark and Ella Baker
Jeff Kolnick
TAH/JPS
Hamer Institute
June 2012

2. Assessment Questions
 How did Clark and Baker contribute to the idea of
participatory democracy?
 In what ways were Clark’s and Baker’s
leadership feminist and how might this help
explain their absence from popular discussions of
civil rights leadership?

3. Septima Clark and Ella
Baker
December 13, 1903 –
May 3, 1898–December 15, 1987 December 13, 1986

4. Working to educate and organize and
not for the spotlight
 “You didn’t see me  You always have to get the
on television, you people with you. You can’t
force them into
didn’t see news things….When I went into
stories about me. Mississippi and Alabama I
The kind of role that stayed behind the scene and
I tried to play was to tried to get the people in
pick up pieces or put town to push forward, and
together pieces out then I would come forth with
of which I hoped ideas. But I wouldn’t do it at
organization might first because I knew it was
detrimental….The people in
come. My theory is, the masses, though, do
strong people don’t better than teachers. They
need strong come out. They’re willing to
leaders.” fight anyhow.
 Ella Baker  Septima Clark

5. Building a Grassroots Network of
Leaders
 Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Baker represent a tradition of grassroots
leadership that in many respects explains the success and
significance of the Civil Rights movement.
 By 1965, movement activity had spread into all regions of the
south. In hundreds of local communities, rural and urban, deep
south and upper south, local leaders had emerged who were not
afraid and where empowered with new confidence and tools.
 In their own ways, these women were catalysts in developing a
strong network of leaders among the masses of black folk
throughout the south and they did this over the course of many
years.
 Their leadership was characteristic of women’s leadership: what
Joanne Grant called a “group-centered leadership rather than a
leadership-centered group.’ Or what Barbara Ransby called “a
radical democratic vision” that without being explicitly feminist,
was unable to accommodate any form of discrimination that
limited participation in the movement for any reason other than a

6. Characteristics of Women’s
Leadership
 Non-Hierarchical and egalitarian
 Network Centered
 Institution Builders and
transformers
 Religiously and culturally based
 A focus on adult education,
empowerment, and leadership
development
 Working at the intersections of

7. Political
Socialization
 Direct links to slavery , Clark’s father and Baker’s
grandparents:
 Clark learned to work with everyone and Baker to
challenge authority
 Mothers: Clark to never back down and Baker to
always care for the community
 Fathers: Clark to maintain a sense of who you are
and Baker a pride in heritage and to have some fun in
life
 Both came from families that deeply valued education
and were connected to their communities on many
levels
 Both lived within a community that was close and
connected
 Both had “unconventional marriages” and a lot of

8. Education to Serve
Septima Clark Ella Baker
 High School Graduate ,  Grammar school
Charleston, SC, 1916
graduate and an extra
 1942 BA, Columbia
University year to prepare for
 1945, MA Hampton college
Institute  1918-1927 Shaw
 Worked with DuBois at
Atlanta University Academy and Shaw
 1954, Highlander University,
workshops Valedictorian of both
 Elected to Charleston high school and
School Board in 1976 college
and served two terms

9. “Postgraduate training:”
Clark and Equalization
 Pay inequity
 Work Load
 Access to Charleston schools
as teachers and principals
 Joined NAACP in 1919 in
Charleston and achieved goals
in 1920 after door to door
campaign and gaining 10,000
signatures for a petition
 Started adult education/literacy
in 1935 for WWI Veterans
 Dismissed in 1955 for refusing
to renounce her membership in
the NAACP
 Worked with State NAACP and
Thurgood Marshall starting in
1935 for pay equity. In 1976 she
is awarded back pay and
pension benefits.

10. “Postgraduate training:”
Ella Baker, the 30s, and NYC
 137th Street YWCA and
important friendships:
Dorothy Height and Pauli
Murray
 NAACP
 Harlem Branch Library
 Socialists, Communists,
Organized Labor, UNIA
 The Young Negroes’
Cooperative League
 Worker’s Education
Project (WPA): 1,000
teachers helping workers
gain “a more intelligent
understanding of the
social and political
economy of which he is a
part.”

11. Mrs. Clark and the Power of
Literacy
 Mrs. Clark and the NAACP
 On to Highlander, 1956
 First Citizenship School on John’s Island, 1957
 “All over the Deep South”: Citizenship School Program
transferred to SCLC in 1961 and called the Voter Education
Project 1962
 There were 897 Citizenship schools from 1957-1970
 There were 195 going on in 1964 alone
 Some 10,000 teachers were trained
 Mrs. Clark traveled 11 Southern states conducting and
supervising schools
 Impact
 Empowering thousands of local leaders with new tools
 Overcoming fear
 Networking with leaders throughout the south and ending
isolation
 Empowering hundreds of thousands with literacy and the vote

12. Frederick Douglass on Literacy
 I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being a
slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about
this time, I got hold of a book entitled "The Columbian Orator."
Every opportunity I got, I used to read this book. In the same
book, I met with one of Sheridan's mighty speeches on and in
behalf of Catholic emancipation. These were choice documents
to me. I read them over and over again with unabated interest.
They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which
had frequently flashed through my mind, and died away for want
of utterance. The reading of these documents enabled me to
utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to
sustain slavery; but while they relieved me of one difficulty, they
brought on another even more painful than the one of which I
was relieved. The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and
detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a
band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone
to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land
reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as
well as the most wicked of men.

13. Building the Network: Mrs. Baker and
the Power of Organizing
 Field Secretary for the NAACP, 1940-43
 Director of Branches, 1943-46
 President of the NYC NAACP
 Founder of In Frienship, 1956
 First Executive Director of SCLC, 1957
 Staff member for SCEF Staff, 1963
 Adult Advisor of SNCC, 1960
 MFDP Washington office, 1964
 Impact
 Extensive network
 Leadership development
 Overcoming fear
 Coalition and institution building

14. Oral History Demonstration with
Dr. Leslie Burl McLemore

15. Discussion
 What are the unique causes that can explain the
relative obscurity of A Philip Randolph, Pauli
Murray, Septima Clark, and Ella Baker?
 What are the common causes that can explain
the relative obscurity of A Philip Randolph, Pauli
Murray, Septima Clark, and Ella Baker?

16. Resources
 http://blackhistory.50webs.com/septimaclark.html
 Katherine Mellen Charron's Freedom’s Teacher:
The Life of Septima Clark
 Septima Clark and Cynthia Stokes Brown, Ready
from Within
 Vicki Crawfrod et all, Women in the Civil Rights
Movement
 Joanne Grant, Ella Baker: Freedom Bound
 Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black
Freedom Movement