This was a bold and visionary attitude in a time when few Black South Carolinians were able to vote. Moreover, PSTA believed in teaching students to become active citizens-informed participants in local governments. Her professional skills were also enhanced by an organization for Black teachers, the Palmetto State Teachers’ Association, whose members shared ideas and practical techniques. She taught in Richland County’s progressive Adult Schools program and, at Fort Jackson, worked with Black soldiers who could not sign their own paychecks. While in Columbia, Clark participated in the movement for pay equalization which would ultimately give her the opportunity to triple her salary.īefore the movement succeeded, Clark supplemented her income by occasionally teaching evening classes in Columbia, a job that made her more adept at teaching adults to read and write. Clark would not have been able to buy this home, however, if court decisions in the 1940s had not changed South Carolina’s practice of paying Black teachers far less than their white counterparts. Since childhood, she’d wanted to give her parents a more comfortable existence. Purchasing a house on Henrietta Street in 1948 was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for the fifty-year-old Septima Clark.
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