The U.S. Mint is issuing a collectible coin in honor of one of South Carolina’s notable civil rights leaders.
The $ 1 coin represents Septima Poinsette Clark marching with three black students carrying books and an American flag, “representing that education and literacy among oppressed people are necessary for the strengthening and enjoyment of civil rights”.
It is part of an ongoing series called the $ 1 American Innovation Coin Program, which honors pioneering individuals and groups, and their inventions and achievements, in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories. Four coins are made each year, until 2032.
The Clark coin, the last made in 2020, can now be purchased in rolls and bags of 25 or 100. The reverse version of the coin, available Monday, costs $ 11.50, with production limited to 50,000.
“Septima Clark was one of the concepts proposed by the governor’s office and presented in a drawing form to advisory committees,” said United States Mint spokesman Michael White. “In the end, the committees and the governor agreed that the selected project was the best option to represent South Carolina in this program.”
The coin’s images were created by artist Justin Kunz, who lives in Utah.
Clark’s life – she was born in 1898 and died in 1987 – closely matched Jim Crow’s period of legalized segregation and oppression. His father was born a slave; his mother was a washerwoman. Growing up in Charleston, his parents emphasized education and economic growth. Clark attended the Avery Normal Institute and then began a productive teaching career.
She joined NAACP during the years of the First World War so that she could pressure the city of Charleston to install African-American teachers and principals in black public schools. During the years of World War II, while living in Columbia, Clark fought with the NAACP for equal pay for black teachers. She formed “citizenship schools”, first under the auspices of the Highlander Folk School and, later, with Martin Luther King Jr’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
In 1969, she supported Charleston hospital workers who were on strike for fair pay and treatment. She remained active in Charleston during the 1970s, earning a seat on the school board and earning recognition from President Jimmy Carter.
Mary Moultrie (foreground) and Septima Clark (to Moultrie’s right) in 1969. Archive / Cecil Williams / Provided
So there is some irony in the recent US Mint announcement that Clark is being honored for producing a $ 1 collectible coin, said Katherine Mellen Charron, professor of history at North Carolina State University and author of the biography “ Freedom’s Teacher: The Life by Septima Clark. “
“What does it mean for a civil rights activist committed to economic justice and rectifying the inequalities of racial capitalism to appear on a coin?” she asked rhetorically. “It is very important to raise this issue.”
Money was a central concern for Clark throughout his life. She fought for equal pay and economic security and suffered targeted attacks on her own wallet.
“The state of South Carolina withdrew her retirement after 40 years as a teacher,” said Charron. “She had to fight in the 1970s to get it back.”
In 1956, the Charleston school board dismissed Clark because she was a member of the NAACP. The state passed a law banning state workers from belonging to civil rights organizations.
“So this question of money is ironic,” said Charron. “At the same time, it is important to increase your visibility. We’ve all heard about Rosa Parks. And now people mention Ella Baker, as they should, and Fannie Lou Hamer, as they should. But the pantheon needs to be expanded. “
Losing her teaching job in Charleston County was a blow, but it also freed her to pursue full-time civil rights work, Charron noted. In 1957, Clark joined the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, where he created what many consider to be his greatest legacy, the citizenship schools, which taught reading and civic education to potential black voters, first on Johns Island and then across the south .
Clark traveled from near and far to raise money for the school based on the success of his program.
“She would represent the Highlander, but also the (civil rights) movement for white funders,” said Charron. “Once, she came back from one of those trips to find that she had been appointed director of education.”
When the state of Tennessee forced Highlander to close in 1961, Clark was transferred to SCLC and expanded the citizenship school program. King knew her as the “mother of the movement” and considered her efforts “the stronghold of the SCLC program department”.
Citizenship schools have established a model that civil rights groups have repeatedly adopted over the years. In 1964, the Congress of Racial Equity and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, with support from SCLC and NAACP, created “Freedom Schools” in Mississippi, as part of the electoral registration efforts in Deep South.
Marion Wright Edelman, a lawyer who participated in Freedom Summer and many other episodes of the 1960s civil rights movement, founded the Children’s Defense Fund in 1973 and ended up adopting the Freedom School concept, making it the cornerstone of your organization.
Even today, in North Charleston, the community development corporation Metanoia organizes a summer Freedom School that teaches children to read as a way to boost their self-esteem and encourage civic engagement.
Septima P. Clark’s coin. US Mint / supplied
Millicent Brown, a community activist and former history professor at Claflin University, said recognizing Clark on a commemorative coin is a beautiful honor, although it is likely to reach a limited audience.
“If it helps to educate more people, inside and outside South Carolina, about her work and the issues she has promoted, then that’s fine.” Although she is wary of small public courtesies designed to appear grandiose, she added. “If there is no tangible and ongoing commitment to her work, it will only become a superficial gesture.”
Brown does not expect the US Mint to do more than produce the currency (“the Mint does not do economic policy,” she said), but she hopes the remembrance could become part of a larger effort for justice.
President Joseph Biden, who pledged to address issues of social and economic justice during his term, issued a memo on Tuesday instructing the Secretary for Housing and Urban Development to investigate ways to correct historic housing and traffic discrimination.
“The Federal Government must recognize and recognize its role in systematically refusing to invest in communities of color and prevent residents of those communities from having access to the same services and resources as their white colleagues,” he wrote.
Sometimes honoring historical figures publicly can be interpreted as cynical or insincere, Brown said. For example, renaming Crosstown – the road that, when built in the 1960s, decimated the predominantly black community on the Charleston peninsula – the “Septima P. Clark Expressway” looks particularly paradoxical, she said. Or naming the streets after local black residents, but failing to fix the holes or cope with the floods they face seems like an empty compliment.
“We hope that if you name a street for someone in an economically depressed area, that sign should open the door to consider the condition of the people who live on the street,” said Brown. “Too often, we don’t take the next steps.”
Honoring Clark with a road or a coin can be a cause for celebration if authorities take the opportunity to put the educator’s work and legacy into action, she said.
What would Septima Clark think of charter schools, or disparities in school funding, or the racial gap in education outcomes, Brown wondered. What would she answer the question, “What is the best way to care for children?”
