Born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, Sarah and Angelina Grimkè were the sixth and thirteenth out of fourteenth children of a wealthy planter and slaves owner family. As a child, Sarah’s inspirations to acquire education were dined by her father, and she was not allowed to go to school because of her gender, so she taught herself mathematics and history from her brothers’ books. When Sarah was 13 years old, her little sister Angelina was born, and she insisted to be her godmother. Throughout their lives, the Grimké sisters had a close relationship, and often Angelina called her older sister mother. In 1818, the 26 years old Sarah traveled with her father to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There, for the first time, she met members of the Quaker religion and got identified with their views on slavery abolition and gender equality. On her return to Charleston, surrounded by enslaved human beings, her abolitionist views became stronger. Three years later, she moved to Philadelphia and converted to Quakerism, and in 1829, Angelina joined her in place and faith. In 1835, 30 years old Angelina wrote a letter of support to the abolitionist journalist William Lloyd Garrison, who published the letter in his paper The Liberator without her permission. Unauthorized Individual acts were not accepted in the Quaker tradition, and the sisters were harshly criticized for sending the letter. On the other hand, the abolitionist movement embraced them and invited them to join the American Anti-Slavery Society. Their intellect, passion for the cause, and first-hand knowledge as slave-owners made them the perfect agents of the abolitionist movement, and the Grimké sisters became one of the first women to speak publicly about slavery. At first, they faced a female-only audience, and within a few months, their crowd has grown, and they began to speak before both men and women. At the time, women did not speak in front of men, and it was considered a disgrace. After been scold for their behavior, they became aware of the scale of the oppression against women, and they began to identify themselves as feminists. In 1836, Angelina wrote an Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, in which she urged white southern women to join the abolitionist movement. She claimed that slavery is prohibited by Christianity and the US Declaration of Independence and explained how it hurts society. She pleaded for freeing slaves, teaching them to read and to ignore wrongful state laws. In that same year, Sarah addressed the church, writing the Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States. In 1837, the sisters traveled through the Northeast, giving lectures on abolition and women’s rights. Their publications and public speaking drew negative attention and criticism for addressing such controversial topics. After the General Association of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts denounced them from speaking in churches, Sarah wrote a series of letters, known as Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, defending women’s rights for public speaking. In 1838, at the age of 33, Angelina married the abolitionist Theodore Weld. Two days later, she addressed the Massachusetts state legislature, becoming the first woman in the US to speak in front of a legislative body. During her speech, a mob of anti-abolitionist gathered outside the building and threw rocks through to window. After this event, the Grimké sisters stopped speaking in public but continued to promote the cause privately, attending antislavery meetings and publishing pamphlets, including the American Slavery as It Is Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, a collection of stories and testimonies from Southern newspapers. In 1839, the sisters moved to a farm in New Jersey and opened a boarding school that later developed into the Raritan Bay Union cooperative. In 1864, they moved to Hyde Park, Massachusetts, where they were active members of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association and even tried to vote in 1870. Read more...

Septima Poinsette Clark was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. In her first years of school, she was homeschooled with other girls at their neighbors and later attended the only public school for black children in the city. The school was until the 8th grade, and afterward, she studied for a year at the private Avery Institute while working to finance her education. She could not afford college tuition, so at the age of 18, she took a test that qualified her as a teacher. Due to her color, she was not allowed to teach in Charleston, so she found a position in a school on John’s Island. During her time on the island, she worked at the school during the day, and at nights, she taught illiterate adults reading and writing with innovative learning methods she developed with everyday resources, such as the Sears catalog. In 1919, at the age of 21, Clark returned to Charleston and taught at Avery Institute. Growing up in the segregated South, she was always aware of the discrimination against black people, but as a teacher, she noticed the deeper layers of its impact and the differences between white and black schools, such as the number of students for a teacher and the gap between teachers salaries. Clark was determined to make a change and joined the Charleston Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Her first political action was to organize her students to sign people on a petition to hire black principals to Avery Institute. In 1923, at 25, she married Nerie David Clark, and they moved to his family house in Hickory, North Carolina. After her husband died, she moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where she taught at the Booker T. Washington High School for the next 17 years. During the summers, Clark completed her education, earning a Bachelor’s degree from Atlanta University when she was 44 and a Master’s degree from Virginia’s Hampton Institute at 48. Afterward, she came back to Charleston to take care of her ill mother while working as a teacher in the Charleston public schools and serving as an active member of the NAACP. In 1956, at the age of 58, Clark was appointed as vice president of the Charleston branch of the NAACP. In that same year, the South Carolina legislature ruled that city or state employees are not permitted to be involved with civil rights organizations. Clark refused to resign from the NAACP, and she was laid off and lost her 40 years pension. At the time, she worked with the Highlander Folk School – an education center for social justice leadership in Monteagle, Tennessee. After getting fired from the Charleston public schools system, she was hired for a full-time position as a director of workshops at the Highlander Folk School. This school was founded in 1932 as a response to the legislation in the Southern states that required literacy tests before vote registration, a role that made it harder for black citizens to vote. Under Clark’s leadership, the literacy program expanded. She hired more teachers and began to teach reading, writing, the rights, and duties of US citizens, how to fill out voter registration forms, driver’s license exams, and familiarizing the students with civil rights organizations. In 1961, Highlander Folk School was closed, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) took charge of the workshop. Clark was appointed director of education and teaching, the first woman to receive a position on its board. In this role, she hired new teachers and was in charge of the training and the curriculum. The SCLC changed the workshop’s name into the Citizenship Education Program (CEP) and established approximately 800 citizenship schools throughout the South. In less than a decade, the CEP had trained more than 10,000 teachers and taught more than 25,000 people. Clark’s citizenship schools became the cornerstone of the Civil Rights Movement, encouraging people to gain literacy skills, know their rights, and exercise their voting rights. In 1970, at the age of 72, Clark retired from the SCLC to establish similar workshops for the American Field Service. She worked with the Tuberculosis Association and the Charleston Health Department, and at 77, she joined the Charleston County School Board, serving in this position for two terms. She passed away at the age of 87. HerStory is included in several guided tours in Charleston, SC: Amazing Ladies of Charleston Walking Tour Historic Women of Charleston Guided Walking Tour Charleston’s Strong Women of the South History Tour Read more...