Septima Poinsette entered Avery Normal Institute as a high school freshman in 1912. Six years later, in 1918-19, she was teaching here, helping support her family, and becoming politically active. Her parents were successfully raising their large family, although their opportunities were limited by South Carolina\u2019s racist laws and the Poinsettes\u2019 working-class status. Septima Poinsette was restricted by these circumstances as well, but during her years at Avery, she broadened her intellectual horizons, boosted her earning power, and strengthened her desire to improve the lives of others.<\/span>\u00a0 As a private school, Avery\u2019s student body included many students from Black families that had been free, well educated, and financially successful before the Civil War. Septima Poinsette felt she \u201cwas considered beneath a lot of the students there since my mother was a washerwoman and my father had been a slave.\u201d Avery\u2019s leaders, however, sought to create a more equitable atmosphere\u2014for example, requiring students to spend no more than one dollar on the material and trimming for their prom dresses.\u00a0 Clark later recalled how much she appreciated the way the Avery teachers \u201ccame to your home, regardless of what kind of a house you had, and talked with your parents. And they wanted me to go to Fisk [University] when I finished.\u201d Her parents wanted this for her, too, but she knew they couldn\u2019t afford Fisk\u2019s tuition, so when she graduated at age eighteen, she went to work, helping to support her family.<\/span>\u00a0
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<\/span>Avery was founded just after the Civil War to train Black students to teach. Septima Poinsette had wanted to be a teacher since grade school, when children in the neighborhood called her \u201cLittle Ma.\u201d\u00a0 At Avery, she thrived under nurturing teachers and a rigorous liberal arts curriculum that included science, literature, history and government, and foreign language. She found time for extracurricular activities--editing the yearbook and performing in plays--while also fundraising for her church. Before and after school, she babysat to earn her tuition.<\/span>\u00a0
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<\/span>Laws prohibited Black teachers from teaching in public schools in the city of Charleston. Septima Poinsette\u2019s first job was at Promise Land School on Johns Island, hours away by a small motorboat. There she taught over 100 Black children and earned $35 per month. Nearby, a white teacher with three white students earned $85 per month. Clearly, South Carolina\u2019s educational system was separate, but not at all equal. From this modest salary, the frugal Ms. Poinsette earned enough to pay her board with a Johns Island family and send her family twenty dollars a month. She even saved money to buy a bicycle for her brother and fabric for her sister Lorene to make \u201ca dress that she could sling around in.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0
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<\/span>Teaching and living on rural Johns Island was challenging. It was worlds away from Charleston. Many residents were farmers who worked for white landowners. Children were often required to work with their parents, only attending school a few weeks per year. Even so, \u201cMiss Seppie,\u201d as she was called, taught all students, whenever they could attend and whatever their grade level. She also organized a PTA, taught sewing classes, helped tend gardens, attended church services, and assisted neighbors who couldn\u2019t read and write. Building these community relationships made her a more effective teacher and leader.<\/span>\u00a0
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<\/span>After two years at Promise Land School, Ms. Poinsette taught at Avery in 1918-19. She also joined the Charleston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which had been formed in 1917; its president was Avery graduate\u202f<\/span>Edwin \u201cTeddy\u201d Harleston<\/span><\/a>. Publicly participating in NAACP activities required courage. Hostility to Black agency was on the rise. In many locations in the U. S. in 1919, white mobs attacked Black Americans, in a period known as \u201cRed Summer.\u201d In May 1919, a mob of whites attacked Black Charlestonians, killing two. The Poinsettes could hear the uproar from their porch. <\/span>\u00a0
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<\/span>That same year, the Charleston NAACP had called for the city to hire Black teachers for students in its Black schools. Septima Poinsette supported this campaign, having attended Charleston\u2019s segregated public schools where white teachers believed themselves racially superior to their students. She helped the NAACP collect signatures of support. \u201cIn 1919 we went door to door to ask people if they wanted black teachers to teach their children,\u201d she later recalled, \u201cbecause the lawmakers said that only the mulattoes wanted these jobs, and they didn't think that the domestic workers and the chauffeurs and the garbage people and the longshoremen wanted black teachers. So we had to do a door-to-door thing to get black teachers to teach their children. . . . I did Calhoun Street from King to the river with some of my students.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0
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<\/span>During her years at Avery, Septima Poinsette grew, not only as a teacher, but also as a citizen. Not content with simply earning a better living than her parents and enjoying the benefits of Avery\u2019s more privileged atmosphere, she was determined to make a better learning environment for all Charleston\u2019s Black children.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>","sponsor":null,"subtitle":null,"accessinfo":null,"lede":"At the Avery Normal Institute at 125 Bull Street (now called the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture), Ms. Septima Poinsette studied, taught, and began participating in activism. ","website":null,"related_resources":["Avery Research Center. \u201cStudent Activities.\u201d Avery: The Spirit That Would Not Die.<\/a> Lowcountry Digital History Initiative, May 2017.","Brown, Millicent E.. \u201c \"Reversing the Nadir: Twentieth Century Black Charleston Organizes for Changes, 1900-1920\"\u201d Lowcountry Digital Library, Avery Research Center at the College of Charleston, 1994-10-14.","\u201cColored Teachers in Charleston Schools,\u201d Crisis<\/em>, June 1921, pp 58-60.","Eliot Wigginton. Refuse to Stand Silently By: An Oral History of Grass Roots Social Activism in America, 1921-1964.<\/em> Doubleday, 1992.","\u201cHistory of the Avery Research Center.\u201d https:\/\/avery.cofc.edu\/about\/history-of-avery\/<\/a>","Katherine Mellon Charron, Freedom\u2019s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark.<\/em> University of North Carolina Press, 2009.","Remembering Individuals, Remembering Communities: Septima P. Clark and Public History in Charleston.<\/em> Lowcountry Digital History Initiative, February 2017.","Septima Clark with Cynthia Stokes Brown. Ready From Within: Septima Clark and the Civil Rights Movement, a First-Person Narrative.<\/em> Africa World Press, 1990.","Septima Clark with Jacqueline Dowd Hall, July 25, 1976. Interview G-0016<\/a>. Southern Oral History Program Collection, University of North Carolina."],"factoids":[],"files":{"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/7687f83a0ec7582827e58415e439edee.jpg":{"id":611,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Avery Research Center for African American Culture","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/7687f83a0ec7582827e58415e439edee.jpg","description":"Avery Research Center for African American Culture, formerly the Avery Normal Institute, where Septima Clark was a student and then a teacher. | The College Today"},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/c99e0d9e1c8391af1b230189dc278de1.jpg":{"id":516,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Photo of the Avery Institute from 1900 ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/c99e0d9e1c8391af1b230189dc278de1.jpg","description":"The Avery Normal Institute in 1900. Founded in 1865, the Avery was a private high school that prepared students for professional careers. Originally created to train Black teachers, its rigorous academic curriculum also prepared students to further their education and to become community leaders. | Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC. "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/b2a3fad4decb46146b415998474e0e5c.jpg":{"id":507,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Photograph of Principal Cox addressing student body in weekly chapel service in the Avery auditorium, 1916. ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/b2a3fad4decb46146b415998474e0e5c.jpg","description":"Avery Institute Principal Benjamin Cox addresses the student body during a weekly chapel service in 1916. | Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC. "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/44e2a198fc0d9fc386fd334a5f10e8a5.jpg":{"id":509,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Septima Poinsette with Avery yearbook staff, 1916 ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/44e2a198fc0d9fc386fd334a5f10e8a5.jpg","description":"Septima Poinsette was one of the yearbook\u2019s editors during her senior year at Avery. Her teachers recognized her academic ability and encouraged her parents to send her to Fisk University, but she knew the tuition was more than they could afford, so she began her teaching career, enabling her to help support her family.\u202f | Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC. "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/5d32e2de5ecbc49e6f71c8c94e214320.jpg":{"id":508,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Septima Poinsette, seated on far right, in play \u201cHiawatha\u201d at Avery in 1916.. ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/5d32e2de5ecbc49e6f71c8c94e214320.jpg","description":"Septima Poinsette in 1916 with other members of cast of Avery\u2019s production of \u201cHiawatha,\u201d based on a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow about a legendary Mohawk hero. In interviews later in life, Septima Clark and her cousin Bernice Robinson recalled that their mothers\u2019 side of the family had Native American ancestry.\u202f | Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC. "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/3c2c05fa4d6dbdaa6649936b21b09ffa.jpg":{"id":510,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Septima Poinsette\u2019s yearbook photo, 1916 ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/3c2c05fa4d6dbdaa6649936b21b09ffa.jpg","description":"Septima Poinsette, who entered Avery as a ninth grader in 1912, participated in numerous school activities while also earning her tuition by babysitting a neighbor\u2019s children before and after school.\u202f\u202f | Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC. "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/e914cde2cdc29728a0b707a04b8ef9c8.jpg":{"id":511,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Children in rural Lowcountry","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/e914cde2cdc29728a0b707a04b8ef9c8.jpg","description":"Children walking on an unpaved road in the Lowcountry. Black teachers were not allowed in Charleston\u2019s downtown public schools, so Septima\u2019s first teaching job was on Johns Island, SC. At that time, the island was nine hours away by motorboat. Many residents had never left the island. Children attended school irregularly, as they were often needed to help on their parents' farm.\u202f | South Carolina Historical Society "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/ef242297018c1754a7c2f93b649e6ed7.jpg":{"id":514,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Septima Clark teaching Johns Island, S.C. 1919, in Septima P. Clark scrapbook. ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/ef242297018c1754a7c2f93b649e6ed7.jpg","description":"Septima Poinsette, Johns Island, 1919. | Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC. "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/8b1b6174de03bfb1d96cf31a06801147.jpg":{"id":512,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Photograph of the Promised Land School (John\u2019s Island) 1954, with children outside ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/8b1b6174de03bfb1d96cf31a06801147.jpg","description":"Children standing outside of Promise Land School, Johns Island, SC, in 1954. Septima Clark\u2019s first teaching job was here in 1916, but conditions were still inadequate in the 1950s, when local leaders were advocating for improved public services for Johns Island\u2019s Black residents. | Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC. "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/60220aba643d83669665d48cccd66c3f.jpg":{"id":595,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Paper fan with image of "Dr. W. E. B. DuBois and Sightseeing Party, March 1917 \u2013 incl. Charleston NAACP founders.\u202f ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/60220aba643d83669665d48cccd66c3f.jpg","description":"Intellectual and activist W. E. B. Du Bois with\u202fBlack Charlestonians. Du Bois, founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) visited Charleston in 1916 and met with community leaders prior to the 1917 founding of\u202f the Charleston NAACP\u202f. | Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC. "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/b6d2ab46b3202c011a8224b1e3f645c9.jpg":{"id":515,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"NAACP Petition clipping ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/b6d2ab46b3202c011a8224b1e3f645c9.jpg","description":"Portion of petition Charleston NAACP presented to Charleston City Board of School Commissioners, who did not grant this request. In response, members of the NAACP, including Septima Poinsette, collected signatures from over 4,500 Charlestonians, demonstrating that a majority of Black households wanted Black teachers in their schools. After the NAACP presented these signatures to the South Carolina General Assembly, the school board relented and agreed to begin hiring Black teachers in 1920. | January 15, 1919, Charleston News and Courier<\/em>, Charleston, South Carolina, Page 6."},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/84b47be9813a7bb008c1bf88cb6c0a72.jpg":{"id":581,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"News and Courier Article, 1919, \u201cRace Riots Occur Here\u201d ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/84b47be9813a7bb008c1bf88cb6c0a72.jpg","description":"On May 10, 1919, white men in downtown Charleston attacked Black citizens, killing two and wounding many more. Clark later told an interviewer that the Poinsette family stayed inside that night, terrified after hearing, from their front porch, the cries of people in the street. | Charleston News and Courier, Second Ed., 11 May 1919, p. 1. Accessed at NewsBank. "}}}