On the cover of this publication entitled “I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America” is Septima Poinsette Clark (1898 – December 15). As one of the most effective activists for the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. referred to Clark as "The Mother of the Movement". Believing that literacy was the key to empowerment, Clark developed literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the drive for voting rights and civil rights for Black people.
Recalling how she and her team recruited teachers for a citizenship school in the South, she said: “We were trying to make teachers out of people who could barely read and write. But they could teach. If they could read at all, we could teach them that c-o-n-s-t-t-u-t-i-o-n spells constitution.”
Here are more remarks from Septima Clark:
“I think that the work the women did during the time of civil rights is what really carried the movement along. The women carried forth the ideas. I think the civil rights movement would never have taken off if some women hadn’t started to speak up.“
“I’d tell the children of the future that they have to stand up for their rights. They have an idea that they can. But I feel that they are shadows underneath a great shelter and that they need to come forth and stand up for some of the things that are right.” (From “I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America”)
