Southern Christian Leadership Conference

===Citizenship Schools===
Originally started in 1954 by [[Esau Jenkins]] and [[Septima Poinsette Clark|Septima Clark]] on the [[Sea Islands]] off the coast of [[South Carolina]] and [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]], the Citizenship Schools focused on teaching adults to read so they could pass the voter-registration [[literacy test]]s, fill out driver's license exams, use mail-order forms, and open checking accounts. Under the auspices of the Highlander Folk School (now [[Highlander Research and Education Center]]) the program was expanded across the South. The [[Johns Island, South Carolina|Johns Island]] Citizenship School was housed at [[The Progressive Club]], listed on the [[National Register of Historic Places]] in 2007.<ref name="nris">{{NRISref|version=2010a}}</ref><ref name=scdah>{{cite web|title=The Progressive Club, Charleston County (3377 River Rd., Johns Island)|url=http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/charleston/S10817710183/index.htm|work=National Register Properties in South Carolina|publisher=South Carolina Department of Archives and History|access-date=2014-08-01}}</ref>

According to Septima Clark's autobiography, ''Echo In My Soul'' (page 225), the Highlander Folk School was closed because it engaged in commercial activities in violation its charter; Highlander Folk School was chartered by the State of Tennessee as a non-profit corporation without stockholders or owners. However, in 1961, the Highlander staff reincorporated as the Highlander Research and Education Center and moved to [[Knoxville, Tennessee|Knoxville]]. Under the innocuous cover of adult-literacy classes, the schools secretly taught democracy and civil rights, community leadership and organizing, practical politics, and the strategies and tactics of resistance and struggle, and in so doing built the human foundations of the mass community struggles to come.

Eventually, close to 69,000 teachers, most of them unpaid volunteers and many with little formal education taught Citizenship Schools throughout the South.<ref>{{cite book
  | last = Payne
  | first = Charles
  | authorlink = Charles M. Payne
  | title = I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle
  | url = https://archive.org/details/ivegotlightoffre00payn
  | url-access = registration
  | publisher = University of California Press
  | year = 1995| isbn = 9780520085152
 }}</ref> Many of the [[Civil Rights Movement]]'s adult leaders such as [[Fannie Lou Hamer]] and [[Victoria Gray Adams|Victoria Gray]], and hundreds of other local leaders in black communities across the South attended and taught citizenship schools.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis54.htm#1954ccs Citizenship Schools] ~ Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref>

Under the leadership of Clark, the citizenship school project trained over 10,000 citizenship schoolteachers who led citizenship schools throughout the South, representing a popular education effort on a massive scale.<ref name="Payne, Charles 1997">Payne, Charles. ''[[I've Got the Light of Freedom:  The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle]].'' University of California, 1997.</ref> On top of these 10,000 teachers, citizenship schools reached and taught more than 25,000 people.<ref name="Charron, Katherine Mellen 2009">Charron, Katherine Mellen (2009). Freedom's Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark. The University of North Carolina Press.</ref> By 1968, over 700,000 African Americans became registered voters thanks to Clark's dedication to the movement.<ref name="Brown-Nagin 2006">Brown-Nagin, Tomiko 2006. The Transformation of a Social Movement into Law? the SCLC and NAACP's campaigns for civil rights reconsidered in the light of the educational activism of Septima Clark. Routledge.</ref>

As a result of the SCLC acquiring the already-established Citizenship Schools program, as its director, Clark became the first woman allowed a position on the SCLC board, despite continued resistance from the other (exclusively male) SCLC leaders.<ref>Brown-Nagin, Tomiko (2006). The Transformation of a Social Movement into Law? the SCLC and NAACP's campaigns for civil rights reconsidered in the light of the educational activism of Septima Clark. Routledge.</ref> [[Andrew Young]], who had joined Highlander the previous year to work with the Citizenship Schools, also joined the SCLC staff. The SCLC staff of citizenship schools were overwhelmingly women, as a result of the daily experience gained by becoming a teacher.<ref name="Charron, Katherine Mellen 2009"/>

Clark would struggle against relentless sexism and male supremacy during her time on the SCLC, much as [[Ella Baker]] had, with particularly harsh sexism emanating from [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] himself.<ref name="Payne, Charles 1997"/>  [[Ralph Abernathy]] also objected to a woman being allowed to participate in SCLC decision making and leadership, as Clark said: {{Blockquote |text="I can remember Reverend Abernathy asking many times, why was Septima Clark on the Executive Board of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference? And Dr. King would always say, 'She was the one who proposed this citizenship education which is bringing to us not only money but a lot of people who will register and vote.' And he asked that many times. It was hard for him to see a woman on that executive body."<ref>[http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/playback.html?base_file=G-0017&duration=01:26:08 "Interview with Septima Poinsette Clark, July 30, 1976"]. Documenting the American South.</ref>}} Clark attested that deliberate and widespread discrimination and even overt suppression of women was "one of the greatest weaknesses of the civil rights movement."<ref name="Brown-Nagin 2006"/>