state policy that barred city or state employees from belonging to the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Her thinking was that “if whites could be-
long to the Ku Klux Klan, then surely blacks could belong to the NAACP.” Even though she
wrote more than 700 letters, only 26 teachers answered her. Clark later wrote that “I consid-
ered that one of the failures of my life because I think that I tried to push them into some-
thing that they weren’t ready for.... You always have to get the people with you. You can’t
just force them into things” (p. 37).
This experience played a crucial role in shaping Clark’s approach to teaching, which was
based on the idea that people had to be “ready from within.” She wrote: “I never once felt
afraid, not on any of those marches. Bullets could have gotten me, but somehow or other
they didn’t. I felt very good about going, about talking to people. I knew that people had got-
ten to the place where they saw the type of meanness that was being shown throughout
their little towns. They hadn’t noticed it before, but now they were ready from within to do
something about it” (p. 71).
One of the more powerful stories in her autobiography is her account of teaching reading
and writing to adults so they could qualify to vote. “To teach reading I wrote their stories on
the dry cleaner’s (paper) bags, stories of their country right around them, where they
walked to come to school, the things that grew around them, what they could see in the
skies. They told them to me, and I wrote them on dry cleaner’s bags and tacked them on the
wall. From the fourth grade through the sixth grade they all did that same reading. But they
needed that because it wasn’t any use to do graded reading when they had not had any ba-
sic words at all” (p. 106).
Clark had no problem admitting that everything did not work. But she felt that her mis-
takes were key to her learning to be a successful teacher. “Many times there were failures.
But we had to mull over those failures and work until we could get them ironed out. The only
reason why I thought the Citizenship School Program was right was because when people
went down to register and vote, they were able to register and vote. They received their reg-
istration certificate. Then I knew that what I did must have been right. But I didn’t know it be-
fore. It was an experiment that I was trying... I couldn’t be sure that the experiment was go-
ing to work. I don’t think anybody can be sure. You just try and see if it’s coming” (p. 126).
JOIN THE CONVERSATION—SEPTIMA CLARK’S PHILOSOPHYQuestions to Consider:- Is Septima Clark a philosopher? Explain.
- Are you a philosopher? Explain.
3.In your opinion, do you have to “buy” a philosopher’s entire package, or should you
feel free to pick and choose what makes sense to you? Explain.
Other Educational Thinkers You Should Know
In this book, Maureen Murphy, S. Maxwell Hines, and I want to offer education students, stu-
dent teachers, and beginning teachers a research- and theory-based approach to teaching
that will make it possible to have a positive impact on the lives of students and on schools.
Most preservice and beginning teachers are preoccupied with the mechanics of teaching
practice (the “how to”) and tend to shy away from the “why.” In a focus group set up to dis-
cuss this chapter, a teacher education student lamented that “every major theorist we look
at has someone else who argues the exact opposite point.” A beginning teacher added that
GOALS 11