{"id":60,"featured":0,"modified":"2025-01-24 20:51:42","latitude":32.77349889999999987821865943260490894317626953125,"longitude":-79.925087076715925604730728082358837127685546875,"title":"Overcoming: Septima Clark Meets Personal Challenges, 1920-47","address":"2 Murray Blvd.","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/c21e3cb19d21cd51fd7e44189257e857.jpg","creator":["Julia Eichelberger","Committee on Commemoration and Landscapes"],"description":"Although she was a successful teacher, in her twenties and thirties Septima Poinsette Clark also experienced several difficulties and setbacks. At one point, she was discouraged enough to contemplate suicide. She did not realize, then, how much she had to offer her family and community, and she had no idea that someday, societal challenges she faced might also be overcome.
\r\n
\r\nIn 1920, Septima Poinsette went against her mother\u2019s wishes to marry a Navy sailor from North Carolina she\u2019d met while volunteering at a club that offered hospitality to soldiers (the \u201ccolored\u201d Victory Club at 424 King Street). After the sailor, Mr. Nerie Clark, had asked for her mother\u2019s blessing, but did not receive it, Ms. Poinsette accepted his proposal and married at age 22. \u201cSince I had never fallen in love before, I thought this was my chance. This was my life, so I went ahead with it.\u201d
\r\n
\r\nTheir first child was born in 1921. \u201cI called her Victoria for my mother, but she didn\u2019t live but twenty-three days,\u201d Ms. Clark later recalled, decades later. \u201cI felt sure that it was my sin that caused that. I had disobeyed my mother, and I thought that\u2019s why this baby didn\u2019t live. I went down on the Battery, and I thought so much about drowning myself. My mother must have thought about it, too, because she sent my brother on a bicycle to look for me. He found me sitting down there. I changed my mind, I guess, and came home.\u201d
\r\n
\r\nAfter her family\u2019s intervention, Ms. Clark continued grieving. \u201cMy husband was at sea at that time. That\u2019s what made me feel so terrible about it. We buried that baby, and when he came back I had to tell him about it, which was sad. There was nothing else I could do. Right after that we left and went to North Carolina to his people, and I got pregnant again.\u201d The Clarks moved to Dayton, Ohio, where their second child, Nerie, Jr., was born in 1925. More heartbreak followed when she discovered her husband was having an affair. She and Nerie, Jr. moved in with her in-laws in North Carolina. Ten months later, she was called back to Ohio \u201cto say goodbye to my deeply ashamed husband\u201d who was dying from kidney disease. Decades later, \"Ready from Within\" disclosed how difficult this had been for Clark. \u201cI took his body home for burial and pieced together all the sweet notes he had written me, so the minister could help the family feel good. The casket lay in his mother\u2019s living room, and his ten-month-old son, just learning to walk, swung on the handles as if it were a toy.\u201d
\r\n
\r\nDedicated to her son, Ms. Clark kept going. She returned to Promise Land School to teach in 1927. Nerie Jr. became ill while living on Johns Island, and Ms. Clark sent him to her in-laws\u2019 to live. In 1929 she moved to Columbia, SC. \u201cI hated to give up my work on Johns Island, but I was a widow with a young son, and I knew I must look ahead. I had been attending summer school in Columbia during the vacation months, and I knew that salaries for teachers there were $65 a month.\u201d There, she taught while continuing to pursue a bachelor\u2019s degree. \u201cYou know, segregation caused us to have double sessions [in overcrowded Black schools]. And I taught from twelve o'clock in the day till five in the afternoon. And in the mornings I could take two or three classes at one college, because I was in a college town, and at night I could take two or three more.\u201d She also took summer courses, even though that limited the time she could spend with Nerie, Jr. \u201cIt caused me a lot of sorrow to decide to leave my son with his grandparents. I hated it so much. But I had to go teach, and I used to cry every time. When I went to summer school, pulling up my credits, it was hard for me to leave him.\u201d She took a memorable summer course at Atlanta University with Black intellectual and activist W. E. B. Du Bois. During a class discussion, she described having come to class on a streetcar and seeing a Black mother having to tell her young son he could not sit in the front . Du Bois responded to Ms. Clark\u2019s story by telling the class that \u201cthere will come a time when this will be changed.\u201d
\r\n
\r\nWhile living in Columbia, Ms. Clark became more self-confident, feeling that she \u201ccould mix with people that I couldn\u2019t in Charleston because my father was a former slave and my mother took in laundry. Columbia was more democratic. There I learned to feel comfortable with middle-class people, even though I never really considered myself a middle-class person.\u201d Wishing to provide more for her son, and \u201cto buy a house for my parents,\u201d she continued to work extra jobs; even in Columbia, Black teachers made far less than their white counterparts. One summer she worked at a camp in Maine, \u201cand it cleared my money that I made in the winter.\u201d
\r\n
\r\nClark earned her bachelor\u2019s degree from Benedict College in Columbia in 1942, and in 1946, earned an M. A. from Hampton Institute. During eighteen years in Columbia, she improved her financial position greatly. \u201cWhen I left . . . my salary had advanced from $780 a year to almost $4000 a year,\u201d she recalled.
\r\n
\r\nShe decided to leave after her mother suffered a stroke. For months, Ms. Clark traveled to Charleston every weekend to care for her before deciding to move back. \u201cComing down from Columbia at that time on the bus was hard. Segregation was at its height. I would get on a bus in the afternoon, and no matter how long the trip you could never use a bathroom. . . . I said to myself, \u2018Now, we\u2019ve got to do something about these things,\u2019 and that\u2019s what I did for the next twenty-four years.\u201d Having moved away from Charleston as a grieving young wife, Ms. Clark returned in 1947 as a loyal daughter and an accomplished, determined woman. ","sponsor":null,"subtitle":null,"accessinfo":null,"lede":"Grieving the death of her infant daughter, a young Septima Poinsette Clark came to the Charleston Battery and almost succumbed to despair. Eventually she overcame her grief and weathered other personal challenges in the next two decades, growing more confident and determined.","website":null,"related_resources":["Eliot Wigginton,\u00a0Refuse to Stand Silently By: An Oral History of Grass Roots Social Activism in America, 1921-1964.<\/em> Doubleday, 1992.","Katherine Mellon Charron, Freedom\u2019s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark.<\/em> University of North Carolina Press, 2009.","Septima Clark with Cynthia Stokes Brown,\u00a0Ready 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\/c21e3cb19d21cd51fd7e44189257e857.jpg":{"id":612,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":" Charleston Battery overlooking the Cooper River, corner of East Bay and Water Streets, 2023","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/c21e3cb19d21cd51fd7e44189257e857.jpg","description":"In 1921, Septima Poinsette Clark came here, distraught over the death of her infant daughter. \u201cI went down on the Battery and I thought so much about drowning myself,\u201d she recalled years later. Fortunately, her family noticed she was gone and brought her back home. "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/1fed672aacf44d107b3b08940d660db4.jpg":{"id":518,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Clipping on Victory Club ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/1fed672aacf44d107b3b08940d660db4.jpg","description":"Septima served as a volunteer at the Victory Club, which provided hospitality and support for Black servicemen. Septima\u2019s father also worked here as a custodian. She met her future husband, sailor Nerie Clark, at this club.\u202f\u202f | Charleston News and Courier, December 3, 1919, p. 10. Newsbank.\u202f\u202f "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/d096f900548f522d10d102ce6b39bc44.jpg":{"id":517,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Nerie and Septima Clark 1919 photograph in Septima P. Clark scrapbook. ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/d096f900548f522d10d102ce6b39bc44.jpg","description":"Nerie Clark and Septima Poinsette, 1919. \u201cI had never fallen in love before,\u201d she said later. Her mother tried to discourage the romance. \u201cCharleston wasn\u2019t especially fond of sailors; in those days, they had the reputation of being rough fellows,\u201d Clark recalled. She was a dutiful and respectful daughter, but she felt this was her decision. \u201cThis was my life, so I went ahead with it.\u201d | Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC. "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/f57f3983755f09f8ccdcad2246f65734.jpg":{"id":596,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Photo of Mrs. Clark with Nerie Jr. 1924 ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/f57f3983755f09f8ccdcad2246f65734.jpg","description":"Matilda Clark, Septima\u2019s mother-in-law, with Nerie Clark, Jr, 1924, Hickory, NC. | Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC. "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/5eae865f00d0984b52acf8e7d6b33a6a.jpg":{"id":520,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Black and white photograph of Lucille Poinsette, Peter Poinsette, a young Septima P. Clark standing by a car. 1924. ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/5eae865f00d0984b52acf8e7d6b33a6a.jpg","description":"Septima P. Clark with her brother and sister-in law, Peter and Lucille Poinsette, 1924. | Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC. "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/6f2cab741b107bc15878dc75d08313e9.jpg":{"id":521,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"W. E. B. DuBois, 1920s ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/6f2cab741b107bc15878dc75d08313e9.jpg","description":"W.E. B. Du Bois, legendary Black intellectual and activist, 1920s. Septima Clark took a class from Du Bois at Clark Atlanta University during summer 1937. On the way to class, she observed a Black mother having to tell her toddler son that he could not sit in the front of the streetcar. She spoke about the issue during class, and Du Bois told the class that someday, that situation would change. | Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/54f2cebbc150475b6732f978bbac7696.jpg":{"id":597,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Photo of Nerie Jr. 1930s ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/54f2cebbc150475b6732f978bbac7696.jpg","description":"Nerie Clark, Jr., 1936. After his father\u2019s death, Nerie, Jr. often lived with his grandmother in North Carolina while his mother worked or attended universities elsewhere. \u201cIt caused me a lot of sorrow to decide to leave my son with his grandparents. I hated it so much. But I had to go teach, and I used to cry every time. When I went to summer school, pulling up my credits, it was hard for me to leave him.\u201d | Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC. "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/a659a5d23c8ac45a28423fa5150ecf08.jpg":{"id":519,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Hampton Institute, VA commendation for successful studies. 1944 in Septima P. Clark Scrapbook. ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/a659a5d23c8ac45a28423fa5150ecf08.jpg","description":"Commendation for successful studies at Hampton Institute, 1944. Septima Clark earned a bachelor's degree in 1942 and was now pursuing a master\u2019s. | Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC. "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/3acbf74b28d988a03bd93e2956fc9003.jpg":{"id":582,"mime-type":"image\/png","title":"Segregated bus station in North Carolina, May, 1940 ","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/3acbf74b28d988a03bd93e2956fc9003.jpg","description":"Segregated bus station, Durham, North Carolina, May 1940. This was typical of bus travel all over the South. In many locations, no restrooms were available for Black passengers, as Clark experienced regularly when taking the bus from Columbia, SC to Charleston. \u201dI would get on a bus in the afternoon, and no matter how long the trip you could never use a bathroom.\u201d | Credit Line: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration\/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives. Delano, Jack, photographer.\u202fAt the bus station in Durham, North Carolina. "}}}