13 www.CharlestonWomenPodcast.com | www.ReadCW.com | www.Instagram.com/CharlestonWomen to save the structure, which survived threats from the KKK in the 1960s as well as abandonment. In 1985, the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture opened. Dr. Tamara Butler, Ph.D. and executive director, said of the center’s extensive archives and impressive library, “Our job is to bring history home.” Indeed, some of our nation’s most important leaders in social justice attended Avery, including Septima Poinsette Clark. After her graduation in 1916, Clark couldn’t afford college tuition. At age 18, she took a state examination that gave her the opportunity to teach, although local law dictated that only white educators could teach Black students on the peninsula, and Black teachers had to work in sea island communities such as Johns Island. In 1919, Clark began working with the NAACP and spent the next four decades establishing “citizenship schools” where she taught literacy to thousands of interracial people so they could read the constitution and understand their rights. “I believe unconditionally in the ability of people to respond when they are told the truth. We need to be taught to study rather than believe, to inquire rather than to affirm,” Clark said. In 1945, Clark helped win equal pay for Black teachers. Then when South Carolina passed a law in 1965 banning city and state employees from any involvement with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Clark refused to give up advocating with the NAACP for the integration of public schools. Consequently, she was fired, lost her pension and was thrown into prison on several made-up charges such as illegal alcohol possession. The accusations were later dropped. When Clark was released from jail, Martin Luther King Jr. invited her to work with him by expanding her model of citizen schools across the South. In 1987, at 87 years of age, Clark passed away and was buried at her Old Bethel United Methodist Church. She leaves behind a legacy as the grandmother of the Civil Rights Movement, of which she said, “The air has finally gotten to the place that we can breathe it together.” THE POLLITZER SISTERS While Clark was starting her journey in the fight for civil rights, the Pollitzer sisters Mable, Carrie and Anita were arguing for women’s suffrage. The eldest sister, Mable, graduated from Columbia University in 1906 and returned to her hometown of Charleston where she became a teacher at Memminger for the next forty years, creating the natural science department and the first sexed program for her female students in their senior year. A charter member of the Charleston Equal Suffrage League, Mable later joined the National Women’s Party (NWP) as South Carolina’s state chair. In the 1930s, along with Laura Bragg, director of the Charleston Museum, Mable also established the first free library to serve both Black and white residents. Meanwhile, since women who were pursuing a higher level of education were forced to leave the state, Mable’s younger sister Carrie petitioned men’s organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce to allow women to attend the College of Charleston. According to Bain, by 1918, Carrie won the battle and the first women were admitted. At 25 years-old, the third Pollitzer daughter, Anita, was the youngest of the NWP officers to serve. As secretary of the legislative committee of the NWP, Anita’s claim to fame was her work that helped to pass the 19th amendment, which was codified into the Constitution on Aug.26, 1920, after decades of suffragettes overcoming violence and resistance from authorities and spectators. These stories don’t begin to scratch the surface of the strong women of Charleston who pioneered the past, laying the foundation for the present. May we preserve their hard work for the future. To learn more history about our local femmes’ fatales, visit WalkCharlestonHistory.com. Feature Photo provided by WalkCharlestonHistory.com. The famous Sepitma P. Clark. Photo provided by CharlestonWalkingTours.com. The Pollitzer sisters circa 1910.
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