EP 8 Septima Poinsette Clark — The Freedom’s Teacher I Women And Resistance 🌍

In this conversation, Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla explore the life and contributions of Septima Clark, a pivotal figure in the civil rights movement. It delves into her early life, the importance of literacy as a tool for liberation, and the establishment of citizenship schools that empowered African Americans to engage in the political process. The discussion also addresses the challenges faced within the civil rights movement, particularly regarding gender dynamics, and emphasizes the need for continued education and activism in today's society.

Takeaways

*Septima Clark was a tireless educator and activist.
*Literacy is essential for empowerment and liberation.
*The citizenship schools significantly increased Black voter registration.
*Women played a crucial role in the civil rights movement.
*Historical lessons are vital for current activism.
*Community engagement is key to effective change.
*Education should be accessible to all, regardless of background.
*The civil rights movement faced internal challenges, including gender dynamics.
*Continued political education is necessary for progress.
*Empowerment comes from within the community. 

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Miss Septima Ponsetta-Clark
01:13 The Early Life and Education of Septima Clark
11:43 Literacy as a Tool for Civil Rights
14:14 The Importance of Citizenship Schools
20:03 Challenges within the Civil Rights Movement
21:08 The Highlander Folk School Experience
32:42 Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights Movement
35:23 The Highlander School and Its Impact
38:56 Challenges Faced by the Highlander School
40:42 The Role of Citizenship Schools
43:42 Personal Stories and Marital Challenges
51:12 Gender Dynamics in the Civil Rights Movement
57:16 The Importance of Education and Technology
01:02:03 Writing Your Own Story and Legacy

Welcome  to Women and Resistance, a powerful podcast where we honour the courage, resilience, and revolutionary spirit of women across the globe. Hosted by Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla...

You're listening to Women and Resistance with Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla—where we honour the voices of women who have shaped history through courage and defiance...Now, back to the conversation.

That’s it for this episode of Women and Resistance. Thank you for joining us in amplifying the voices of women who challenge injustice and change the course of history. Be sure to subscribe, share, and continue the conversation. Together We Honour the past, act in the present, and shape the future. Until next time, stay inspired and stay in resistance!

Transcript

Adesoji Iginla (00:01.72)
Good evening, good evening and welcome again to another episode of Women and Resistance. I am your host, Adesuji Igengla and with me, my co-host is, today we have Miss Sotir.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (00:04.116)
you

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (00:15.898)
I am Pobara Neli.

No.

Adesoji Iginla (00:23.958)
Yes, so speaking of our topic of discussion today is none other than the phenomenal person of Miss Septima Ponsetta-Clark.

First question would be, who is she?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (00:50.036)
Well, what can I say? Where do I start?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (00:57.916)
I was born in 1898.

And I lived on the face of this earth to see so many changes amongst the Negro people as we were called back then.

Adesoji Iginla (01:06.541)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:16.39)
so many different things shaped my life.

I think that the thing I am best known for.

is for being a tireless educator. I was a teacher to my people. I was a freedom teacher. I wanted people to be free. And that is what I dedicated my life to. I actually started as a teacher.

Adesoji Iginla (01:35.278)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:48.498)
back in 1916.

and I worked in South Carolina, different areas in South Carolina. At that time, black students in Charleston, which is where I was born, were only taught by white teachers. They would not allow black teachers to even teach the black children. And it took a long time before that changed. And so after I graduated,

Adesoji Iginla (01:56.62)
Wow.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (02:25.14)
As a young woman, I actually went to a place called St. John's Island, and that is where I got my first teaching job. And it was a miserable, miserable place initially. It was a one-room school building with no windows. And so all of the elements...

would just come in.

Adesoji Iginla (02:57.9)
We seem to have lost Ms Satima Clark. We'll try and get her back. There must be an issue with her line. Hopefully we've not lost her completely. And if you give us a minute or two, she should be back.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (03:01.118)
I don't know if you can still hear me because on my end it's saying that you can't.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (03:09.972)
Can you still hear me?

Adesoji Iginla (03:16.545)
One second.

Adesoji Iginla (03:35.864)
Hello?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (03:36.93)
Can you hear me now? It looks like we had some technical difficulties.

Adesoji Iginla (03:38.732)
Yes, we seem to have lost. Yeah, can hear you. Yes, yes. Do go on. Well, I mean, you were, you were

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (03:45.394)
And so.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (03:54.508)
Would you like me to continue? Okay. So born on May 3rd in 1898, and in this place that I was working in St. John's Island, all the elements could come in. There were shutters, but there were no window panes, no glass. And so you felt the wind, you felt the wind, you felt the rain, and it was so bad.

Adesoji Iginla (03:55.179)
Gone.

Yes, please. Yes, please.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (04:23.276)
that at one point I was afraid that I was going to lose some of my toes because it was so cold and I was so frostbitten. But these were the conditions under which some of us had to work because there were so few opportunities for us. But I think it's important to say a little bit about my childhood, my upbringing.

So my father was, there different stories. One is that his mother came pregnant with him. Another one is that he was born on the plantation. But either way, my father was enslaved. And my father,

Peter Porcher Ponsetta. He was enslaved by Joel Ponsetta, who the flower is named after here in the US. He was a botanist. He owned over a hundred enslaved people, but he was considered a unionist and supposedly his plantation was one of the easier ones for black people to be enslaved on.

And so that is where my father got his name. so the flower that we now call the Ponsetas flower was actually from his name because he brought it from Mexico. And as white people would do, it doesn't have a name where it came from. So he gets to put his name on it. But that is where my father's name came from. And

My father used to tell us stories about being a young man. He was what would be called a house slave. And his primary job was to take his master's children to school and wait for them and bring them back. And so they rode on a horse to school and he walked with their books.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (06:45.728)
And when he got to school, he delivered them to the school and he waited outside him and the horse all day. He never tried to learn how to read and write himself. And when the children were done with school, he would put them back on the horse and he would take them back. My father was a very nonviolent man. He never questioned slavery. He never

Adesoji Iginla (07:10.84)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (07:14.732)
questioned the activities, the violence of the Ku Klux Klan against black people. He just kind of accepted his lot.

And I tell you that part of my upbringing.

taught me that literacy means liberation.

that when we do not, when we're not literate, when we cannot travel and see and understand the rest of the world, where you are and what you experience becomes the whole world to you. And you might not even understand that things could be different for you. And I think my father was quite initially content in just his way of life. In fact,

When I talked to him about what happened after the Emancipation Proclamation and enslaved people getting their freedom, he said many of them cried and were upset.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (08:23.392)
because they were concerned that now where would they get their food from? Where would they get that one blanket that they are giving each year to use for the whole year? I wonder how that thinking continues to affect us today. My father, during the Civil War, actually one of his jobs was to take water and kindling to

Adesoji Iginla (08:41.518)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (08:53.142)
the Confederates. So he helped fight against the Unionists. He helped with the firewood, the kindling that was used to fire the cannons against the ships of the Unionists.

Adesoji Iginla (08:57.602)
the unionist.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (09:14.242)
quite interesting times.

Adesoji Iginla (09:17.144)
So fighting against his own enslavers, fighting with his enslavers.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (09:20.066)
Yes, essentially. But my mother, now with my father, it is said that his mother came on a ship called the Wanderer from the Bahamas. But again, it's not clear whether she was already pregnant or if she subsequently got pregnant after she came to Charleston.

Adesoji Iginla (09:33.666)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (09:49.954)
But many of his other siblings were sold to different plantations, different quote unquote owners. But he did stay with his mother. His mother was on the plantation where he was because he told a story about when she died and how she was just in the same room where they stayed.

and you could not take time off work during the day to go and bury your dead. So they just had to leave her there until they found a time in the evening a few days later where they could take her and go and bury her in the woods. And that how they would signal that they were going to bury someone is while they worked, they would sing certain songs.

and in the songs would be the meaning of what is about to happen. But he did tell me that story. But my mother was something else. My mother was a firebrand as we would say today. My mother was also born in Charleston. However, her mother died when she was young.

Adesoji Iginla (10:52.641)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (11:09.334)
Her mother died and there were three sisters, three little girls. And her uncle, who was her mother's brother, who was what they called a cigar sampler in Haiti, made the decision to come and take the girls to Haiti with him. And so my mother grew up in Haiti and my mother was a proud, haughty woman.

Adesoji Iginla (11:26.03)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (11:39.112)
She walked like she was Queen Elizabeth and she certainly tried to dress that way. You know, my mother, her, one of her claims to fame was that she had never been enslaved. She had never been a white man's servant and she ironed clothes for a living. She was laundress in our home, but she refused to work in any white person's home.

In fact, they used to be these.

These people who sold fruits and vegetables, they would have their little carts and they would push the carts down the streets and then they will stop in front of your house and people will come out and then select what they wanted and then pay. My mother would sit on her porch. She would make those white people climb the steps of her porch to show her their goods and then she would purchase.

She was not going to bring herself down to their level to come down off of her perch and go down the steps to meet them. That was the kind of person my mother was. And for her education was very important. For my father too, maybe because, especially when he got a job with the USO and they started paying him in paper checks and you had to sign your name and he didn't know how to sign his name. So initially he was.

Adesoji Iginla (13:06.743)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (13:10.536)
using an X till he learned to sign his name. My father would not whoop us for any other reason except if we were not going to school. But my mother, my mother was strict. She was a disciplinarian and there were a hundred different reasons for why she, we could get a whooping on any given day at any given time. But she was terribly upset that my father did not make the kind of money

to keep her in the way that apparently at one point she had been accustomed to. So she was raised in Haiti. She learned how to read and write in Haiti. And then later her family, moved. They lived in Jacksonville, Florida. And that is actually where she met my father. Cause at that time he used to sail on ships. He did some work on the ships and her sister got married to a man that my mother had actually liked.

Adesoji Iginla (13:47.394)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (14:09.994)
And I think she may have just then made up her mind to marry the next guy who asked her. And that was my father. And it wasn't until she moved with him from Florida to Charleston that she realized he really was not going to have the money that she expected to have in the lifestyle that she had hoped to have. So that was a point of contention for her. But those were my parents. And all of that shaped who I became.

Adesoji Iginla (14:13.676)
you

Adesoji Iginla (14:39.918)
Okay, so you, in your heyday, you were called the queen mother of the civil rights movement. I mean, that's down the line. Well, prior to getting there, what would you say, I mean, you use the inroad of literacy. How did literacy shape the way you viewed the civil rights movement?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (14:46.402)
Yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (15:06.101)
Well...

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (15:10.196)
It was very obvious to me that...

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (15:17.514)
Given the conditions of our time with segregation, we could not make changes without voting. And at that time, they had also created a system where there were many obstacles to black people voting. They had created a system and it changed, it was different for different states. But in South Carolina,

Adesoji Iginla (15:46.273)
I don't know. Okay?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (15:46.358)
You had to be able to read sections of the Constitution. You had to be able to write your name in cursive. You had to be able to interpret certain parts of that Constitution. And so when you had so many Black people who could not read or write, it then became an issue that we could not vote. And if we could not vote, then obviously we could not change our circumstances. And so literacy then was...

absolutely imperative to us being able to make any meaningful changes for ourselves. And I definitely could see how that was a pathway to our liberation. And that is why I say literacy means liberation. And so in terms of the civil rights movement,

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (16:41.472)
Yes, you can protest, but again, if we do not have the ability to put people in positions where decisions can then be made that benefit the Black race, then what is the movement? Where are we moving to exactly? And so, literacy was going to be the key to us being able to

Adesoji Iginla (17:04.247)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (17:11.298)
properly fight and engage this system and to bring about changes.

Adesoji Iginla (17:18.606)
So based on, I mean, you said the idea of people reading the Constitution, you've seen the last election we've had. And suffice to say people have been reticent about engaging with the Constitution because if they have, then surely we won't be living in interesting times. So the question I draw, the question I want to pull there is,

Can you draw parallels with what existed during the idea you came up with, which is the citizen schools and schools and the lack thereof right now in terms of how that would have benefited or maybe revamped or, know, just what's your take with regards to where we're at now?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (17:58.262)
Citizenship schools, yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (18:16.834)
So the citizenship schools, and we'll get into the story of how that started, were absolutely crucial to what ended up happening with the Civil Rights Movement. In July of 1962, there were 40 citizenship schools, and I will go into how we started them. By 1968, there were 80. During that time,

Negro voting strength increased from 57,000 to 150,000 in some places. Altogether, when we looked at it, we could see how we had now enabled over a million new Negro voters through these citizenship schools. And the idea with the citizenship schools was to give people the tools to be able to make their lives better.

So we didn't just teach them what they needed to be able to register to vote. We taught them skills. We met them where they were and we asked, what are some of the issues you're dealing with? So someone might be, it's just, need to sign my check or I need to understand numbers in a different way so that the grocer is not cheating me. And so what we did was we taught very practical skills.

that enabled people to improve their lives. And in addition to that, be able to then pass the literacy test in order to be registered to vote. But you know, places like Texas, it wasn't even a literacy text that you had to pass. It was a poll tax that you had to pay, and you had to pay it every single year. So these were all kinds of obstacles that they put in place. But with the citizenship schools,

What we were doing where we were reaching out to everybody, giving them an opportunity. And what we were doing was we were teaching leadership. We would identify people who were respected in their communities, who were willing to come and learn to read and write. And then basically sometimes a week long workshop, sometimes two weeks, we would have taught these people a sufficient amount of information.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (20:43.66)
to be able to go back and pass the test. Now, some people learned how to read. Some people just memorized the whole constitution and then pretended to read it. Some of you may have children who do that. You read a book often enough to them and they memorize it and they're acting like they're reading. But even those people eventually came back to learn how to read. But we had a system where we were able to get to these adults. And then what was required of them was to go back into their communities.

Adesoji Iginla (20:51.374)
Thank you.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (21:13.972)
and to then set up these citizenship schools. So it wasn't one or two people trying to do everything. It was really trying to galvanize and educate and empower communities by identifying individuals who could take that information back to their communities and then replicate it. And that's what we were doing. And I think what you're seeing now, which there was some of it back then, is

Adesoji Iginla (21:26.015)
community.

Adesoji Iginla (21:35.619)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (21:42.44)
Rather than empowering people, we have one or two or 10, you know, Black people who are known as our leaders maybe, and they suck up all the oxygen. But the regular person is not empowered. I sometimes wonder, you know, we often don't learn from history, and that is why it's so important we're having this conversation. Because we got to a point and after

the assassination of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movements, the different organizations always had issues. They were always at loggerheads. But at that point, we just kind of seemed to have lost that bearing. And then we forgot. We forgot the things that we had done to get us that far. I often think what would have happened if we had continued those citizenship schools? What would have happened?

If we did not just abandon the political education of our people to the regular public schools or what have you, who were never designed to bring about our liberation, what would have happened if we continued to empower people, whether they went formally to school or not, that they could come acquire the skill sets they needed, they could understand how politics, how government works.

How much more then engaged would people be today when we're talking about fewer and fewer black people, African-Americans voting in the elections? If we had continued that process of educating people so that they could see the connection between the ballot and their living, where they live, where they work.

where they are able to worship, where they're able to get educated. If we had continued that, we would not be in the place that we are now. But unfortunately...

Adesoji Iginla (23:49.196)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (23:53.812)
As much progress as we made during that time, it was not sustained.

Adesoji Iginla (24:02.688)
OK, so what would you say, I mean, you mentioned politics. So this is the community interfacing with the larger community, the ones that create all the obstacles and what have you. What sort of machinations happened within the civil rights movement itself? mean, interrelationships, personality clashes, if there were any?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (24:32.498)
are you asking me to gossip, to tell what I have seen and experienced?

Adesoji Iginla (24:32.621)
And,

Adesoji Iginla (24:37.607)
Well, it will give us an insight into understanding what those times were like.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (24:46.636)
Well, how about I start with how I even got into the citizenship schools and how that was established. And then I would definitely tell you how we moved to the SCLC and some of the things that I saw and experienced. So there was a school that was started by Miles Horton up in Tennessee.

Adesoji Iginla (25:06.327)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (25:15.65)
It was called the Highlander Folk School and it began in 1932. I did not visit the Highlander Folk School until 1954. So I joined the NAACP in 1919 and joined my first protest as a 20 year old. You know,

Adesoji Iginla (25:19.608)
Cool, yeah?

Adesoji Iginla (25:36.974)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (25:43.126)
World War had ended and we had African-American soldiers coming back and now that they had seen the world and seen something so different from what they had been experiencing here in the United States of America, they wanted something different. And I was part of that brigade that wanted to use our voices to bring about a change.

And so I continued my work with the NAACP, but I continued to teach as well. In 1954, there was a white lady actually who had asked me to cover for her at the Y. You had a Y for black people, you had a Y for white people, and the two didn't meet. But she asked me to cover for her because she was going to go for...

a week to the Highlander Folk School. And when she came back, she had so many amazing stories to tell. And I made up my mind that summer that I was going to go during my summer break. And so I went up to the Highlander Folk School and I was amazed. You know, even though the street that I grew up on was integrated, we had Germans who lived on the street, we had Irish, we had, of course, Black people.

Adesoji Iginla (27:03.885)
OK.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (27:09.078)
We did not mix, so the children didn't play together. The children stayed in front of their own homes and you did not mix with the others. And my mother in particular did not want us talking to those children. In fact, I remember one time we had taken a walk. You know, back then, what you did for fun is you played, you sang, you played music, you went to church, and sometimes you took walks.

Adesoji Iginla (27:17.916)
little buckets, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (27:38.026)
There were parks we could not go into and things of that nature. But as we were taking this walk, this white girl with her mother dropped her candy and her mother wasn't going to let her pick up the bag of candy. And so when we walked up to where the bag of candy was, I stooped down to pick it up because I was going to enjoy that candy. And my mother gave me a, she gave me a whooping I would never forget.

Adesoji Iginla (28:01.623)
You

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (28:06.496)
because she did not want me growing up, picking up the leftovers of white people and feeling inferior. So at any rate, where we lived and how we grew up, the races did not mix at all. Our churches were different, our schools were different. White teachers could teach the black children, but when you saw your white teacher on the street, you could not greet her. If you greeted her, you would get whooped.

You could not talk to her. And so when I went to this Highlander school, I saw black and white people sitting and talking together.

Adesoji Iginla (28:41.282)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (28:50.134)
when it was time for supper, they ate together. And lo and behold, they shared rooms. my goodness. Very shocking. I'm very much against the laws of Tennessee at the time. And so, but the teaching and the way it opened my eyes and the conversations that I had with people that I would never have had.

Adesoji Iginla (29:00.088)
to shock.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (29:19.286)
where I came from and being able to interact and share stories. And do you know what I found out? White people were not just prejudiced against black people. I heard about white people's prejudice against their own. You know, these class issues. White wealthy people treated the poor.

Adesoji Iginla (29:29.838)
Go on.

Adesoji Iginla (29:42.254)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (29:47.618)
White people like trash. I did not know this. And so I was learning, but I was also teaching. It was very much interactive. And I got to have many conversations with Miles Horton, very interesting man who had started this. And so every summer I would go back until 1956. Now at this time,

you had the NAACP fighting in the courts for many different programs, know, the changes in the law. And so what the Southerners decided to do, the Southern legislators, is they decided to find a way to extinguish the NAACP from the Southern states. And so in South Carolina, they now created a rule that

everybody had to identify all the organizations that they were part of and they were particularly looking for those who were part of subversive organizations of which the NAACP was considered one. Now mind you, Miles Horton and the Highlander School, they were considered communists because they allowed for

Adesoji Iginla (30:58.062)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (31:13.026)
the integration of races. And so many of the other black people, they refused to identify that they were members of the NAACP. When I joined, it was a dollar for a whole year. It just made sense to add my dollar to fighting for changes for my people. Well, I refused. I refused to lie about my association with the NAACP.

Adesoji Iginla (31:17.902)
and reasons, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (31:42.786)
And so I put it down and the head of the black teachers at the time was so worried. Said, you you're going to bring trouble on our heads and you're going to be dismissed. One of the ladies who was part of that group got so worried that they would find out about her involvement with the NAACP that she worried herself into an illness.

Adesoji Iginla (32:11.566)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (32:11.682)
And before they could even fire her, she had become senile. Well, in 1956, I was fired from my job after 40 years of being a teacher in South Carolina.

So mind you, yes, so mind you, I told you I was born in 1898. I get fired in 1956, you do the math. I'm a 58 year old woman.

Adesoji Iginla (32:29.56)
Fired.

Adesoji Iginla (32:41.952)
Erode woman. Basically close to retirement. Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (32:43.892)
I had bought a house, yes. And so when Miles Horton heard about it, he offered me a job at the Highlander Folk School. And that is where I began to fine tune this notion of citizenship schools, particularly when a young man named Esau Jenkins, whom I had previously taught how to read and write, came to me and talked to me about

the issues of the Black people on St. John's Island where he lived at the time. so we, he and the other concerned Black citizens made the decision to purchase a building in which they were now going to be holding these classes that we called citizenship classes. What happened was,

armed with the information he had gotten from us, he ran for office. And all of the black people voted for him, but it was not enough for him to win. And he decided the only way black people could get elected was if more black people were registered to vote. Well, to register to vote, they had to be able to pass these citizenship tests, these literacy tests. And so he and a group of other black people

Adesoji Iginla (34:05.18)
Ship test, Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (34:09.986)
decided they were going to purchase this building. Now that building was going for $1,000. But when the people selling it realized there was black people that were gonna buy it, guess what? They raised the price to $1,500. And Miles Horton gave them the money to buy that building. And what they did was they put a storefront

Adesoji Iginla (34:23.436)
They raised the price.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (34:38.538)
in the front part of the building so that it looked like it was just a place where black people brought their goods and they sold to each other. But in the back, there were two rooms with no windows. And that was the place where with oil lamps, we found a teacher. I believe it was Bernice Robinson that we trained and sent her there. And she began to teach them. And that was the

Adesoji Iginla (34:45.794)
to sell.

Adesoji Iginla (35:04.109)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (35:07.188)
one of the first citizenship schools, and then we used that model and began to spread out. So you could come and learn with the understanding that you needed to take that back to your community and to start a citizenship school. And typically they met two nights a week. You had to meet at least two nights a week. And we gave them the tools not just to be able to register to vote.

but also to improve their overall lives. So I have to tell you about this Highlander School because it was really important. There are a lot of civil rights leaders that we know today that came through that Highlander School. Rosa Parks was one. I taught Rosa. When Rosa came the summer of 1955, oh my goodness, she was such a shy, withdrawn woman.

Adesoji Iginla (35:55.19)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (36:04.97)
She came with her mother, her elderly mother. And initially her mother said, I can't come down and eat with those white people. I can't do that. And so for the whole time she was there, we would take her food up to her. It was just too much shock for her system given how she had been raised. And Rosa was very quiet, but Rosa was a determined woman as well. And we eventually

Adesoji Iginla (36:28.814)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (36:32.534)
got her to start talking and she shared about some of the things she was doing, including when she got black children to be able to see the Freedom Train. The Freedom Train was a program that would go through different states and, but it could not be segregated. So all children could come and see original documents of the constitution and things of that nature. And she said she gathered up these black kids and they went and stood in line.

Adesoji Iginla (36:55.83)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (37:02.24)
and the people in her community were glaring at her. And they did not want those children to go in. But for the people conducting the Freedom Train, it was all or nothing. And so her children, those Black children, were able to go in as well. But it made the white people around her very mad. Rosa was so timid and scared that at the end of her time at Highlander, it was time for her to...

get her transportation back and get on a bus from Atlanta and go on to Montgomery. She was terrified of what would happen as she made her way to even get on the bus on Atlanta. know, would white people know what had happened? Were some of the white people who were there snitches, would they tell? Would she lose her life? And so I ended up having to accompany her and her mother all the way to

Adesoji Iginla (37:56.812)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (37:57.986)
Atlanta before they now got on the bus to go to Montgomery. But guess what happened just a few months later? December 1st, 1955, that same year, I'm reading about Rosa Parks who got too tired to keep standing up for these white people and she refused to stand. That was amazing. That was an amazing story. But let me tell you,

Adesoji Iginla (38:14.924)
refusing to start.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (38:26.642)
lessons that we need to learn about the civil rights movement. I know I'm going to come back to the question you asked me about what I learned, what I observed during that sentence. And this story I'm going to tell you is a part of that. We did not do right by Rosa Parks. You know, when Rosa Parks made that decision to stand, no, to sit and not stand, she was fired from her job. She had a good job in a department store.

making dresses. They fired her from that job. Her husband was a barber and he cut the hair of the distinguished, so-called distinguished white men in his community and they too shunned him and so here was this family and she was responsible for her mother as well with no means of income. I think that

Adesoji Iginla (39:19.598)
Miss.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (39:25.62)
In addition to using her with the, you know, some of the stories that we're being told to help advance the work we're doing with the Civil Rights Movement, I think that she should have been paid. I think that some little stipend should have been given to her to help her and her husband maintain themselves until they could get back on their feet. Let me tell you, things got so bad for Rosa Parks and her husband.

that they had to leave Montgomery. Yes, we raised some money for them. It's about a sum of $300 or so. And they got on a bus. And that is how they moved to Detroit so that she could find a way to make a living. There are too many stories of how we abandoned some of the people that we claim mean the most to us and to the work that we do. Certainly, if any of you are...

Adesoji Iginla (40:16.269)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (40:24.45)
guests who are watching have questions. We invite them to ask their questions, to put their comments in the chat. As you people call it, we did not have those things when I was teaching. that was just one of many stories. so what happened now is the white people were very upset about what was going on at the Highlander School and they were looking for ways to shut it down.

And so one fine day, I want to say was 1960, 1960 or 1961 maybe, they raided the school. And at the time that they came, we had a tub with ice and some drinks, some, you know, soda, things, pop, and some alcoholic beverages. And we also had a jar. There was no charge for anything. When you came to the Highlander School,

your accommodation were free and your food was free. Now, this Highlander school sat on about 200 acres and we were gradually adding more buildings and things, right? There was a library, you know, we grew food, very much communal living. And...

Adesoji Iginla (41:26.606)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (41:46.218)
when they raided the place they now decided that they were going to charge

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (41:58.498)
put out a charge of bootlegging because the jar where people could donate if they wanted to, they said we were selling alcohol illegally, but there were no sales going on. It was just a donation if you wanted to help. And would you believe that they were actually successful in charging me and convicting me as a Tito Tola because I was the one conducting

the classes at the time. And so they said, yes. And so they said, I was responsible. Yeah. So if I am going to, to share something that was included in this book, Parting the Waters, America and the King years, 1954 to 63. And it says, describing Highlander in court as an integrated whorehouse.

Adesoji Iginla (42:29.9)
I'm the rate of heaven.

Adesoji Iginla (42:43.756)
Watch this.

Adesoji Iginla (42:48.558)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (42:56.456)
Sloan, who is the sheriff, obliterated the facility within two years. In a parallel case, he managed to obtain a criminal conviction against the titl-titl-titl-tiler, Septima Clark, under the moonshine laws. But do you know what ended up happening to the Highlander School? So they had sued them and charged them with all kinds of things.

Adesoji Iginla (43:18.552)
Pretend? Pretend?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (43:25.538)
They had padlocked the doors. Four days after they padlocked the doors, actually arsonists went and burnt down most of the school at any rate. And the charge was of selling beer. Based on that, the judge revoked Highlander's corporate charter on February 16th, 1960. And when the US Supreme Court refused to intervene,

What they then did is that all Highlander property was auctioned on the state receivership on December 16th, 1961. So not only did they close down this place, what they did was take the entire property, 200 acres under false pretenses, just to make sure that

Adesoji Iginla (44:08.162)
Wow.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (44:24.77)
there will no longer be a place where we were training people. Daisy Bates came to Highlander School, Andrew Young, Dorothy Height. There were quite a few people that we know that were giants in the civil rights movement that were trained during this time there. Now, Miles Horton wants the

Adesoji Iginla (44:45.133)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (44:52.768)
the legal issues began, understood that there was a strong possibility that the Highlander School would be closed and then that would affect the citizenship schools. Now, understand that at that time, there were different organizations and corporations that were funding the citizenship schools. So we were actually able to pay once we trained a teacher.

and they went back into their community, we were actually able to pay them for those two nights a week that they were now teaching others. And I should say this, Esau Jenkins and the group in St. John's Island, they paid back that $1,500. That was important to them. So Miles Horton, and of course I have the same concerns, but he was concerned that we were doing such great work, but with the...

Adesoji Iginla (45:29.006)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (45:50.346)
charter, the corporate charter of Highlander School being revoked and now with the possibility that the entire property could be taken away, which eventually was. He had a suggestion for the SCLC to take over the citizenship schools. Now, Ella Jo Baker had also

Adesoji Iginla (46:12.172)
YouTube schools,

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (46:16.578)
come to the Highlander School and she and I had a very good relationship. And she initially like, you know, also presented this idea as well to Dr. King. And so it came to pass that in 1961, I became the director of the citizenship schools under the auspices of the SCLC. And let me tell you.

Adesoji Iginla (46:41.934)
C L C.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (46:45.024)
Since you want to know more about how the Civil Rights Movement worked, let me tell you that the Citizenship Schools was a cash cow for the SCLC because we already had all of these partnerships with different funding entities. And so there was quite a bit of money that was coming in that not only then bolstered the Citizenship Schools,

it reinvigorated the voter registration drives that had been waning. In fact, at the time when citizenship schools now came under the auspices of SCLC, even Jet Magazine had had an article where they were questioning the efficacy of the SCLC and how far they had fallen in terms of meeting their stated goals.

for voter registration. And so, yes. Wait a second. Someone said Septima P. Clark and Bernice Robinson were both friends of my grandmother? My goodness. So you see, yes. And back then, they were a cadre of women. We worked hard and we supported one another. I was a member of, different times in my life, up to nine.

Adesoji Iginla (47:47.692)
Yep.

Adesoji Iginla (47:55.521)
us.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (48:11.894)
different organizations, certainly the Black Teachers Organization. I was also a member of the AKA. You know what happened with me and the AKA? So, you know, I was kind of listed as a communist and then of course being a part of the NAACP. And the AKA is where a little, should I say, highfaluting, okay? And at one point I had been

Adesoji Iginla (48:21.655)
Gone?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (48:40.994)
president of the AKAs for two years in Charleston. And so they did make a decision to acknowledge my input and to recognize me, me an award. But at the same time, none of the AKAs would stand next to me and be in a picture with me because they were afraid that if they stood next to me, the picture came out.

showing them next to me that they may be considered as subversives as well, as communists as well, and they wanted to be able to keep their jobs and their livelihoods. And so they did not openly at the same time embrace me. It was quite bizarre. But you know, this was something that, you know, while I could criticize them for making that decision, I tell you, you should know about the Warrens.

Adesoji Iginla (49:11.15)
who will be considered as communists.

Adesoji Iginla (49:26.466)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (49:40.096)
George Warren and his wife. George Warren was some kind of white man in Charleston, South Carolina, and he wanted to see change in South Carolina. And so he decided that he was going to make some rulings that were very controversial for the South Carolinas, right? And

Adesoji Iginla (49:53.262)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (50:07.754)
Once he made those rulings, basically all the white people stopped talking to him and his wife. They could not go to their church. Nobody would, even the dressmakers would not take his wife's money. Nobody would work with them in any capacity. And so they turned to their black friends, but even their black friends were afraid now of being involved with them. But I didn't care.

I went to their house and I invited them to my house. And those were all some of the reasons why many Black people did not want to have anything to do with me. So there was a rule to keep Blacks out of primary elections. That rule had been made before I was born in 1896. The legislature passed that law as part of setting up segregation in South Carolina.

Adesoji Iginla (50:56.653)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (51:02.914)
The US Supreme Court finally ruled against the white primaries in 1944, but some of those southern states were still following those rules. Well, Justice Warren wanted to make a change. He decided, give me a second here while I change glasses so I can actually read the information that I want to share with you.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (51:34.368)
He had grown up in the upper class area of Charleston and he had married a Yankee, an aristocratic girl. So that was already one strike against him because the Confederates did not like you mixing with the Yankees. I had left Charleston, but when I returned, Black people still could not vote in the Democratic primary elections. Of course, there weren't many Blacks who were registered voters, but those who were registered

could not vote in the primary election, which is pretty much where everything, you know, the decisions were made. George Warren realized how wrong it was to keep blacks out of the primary and he decided to change it. And so in 1947, he wrote that blacks must be permitted to vote in the next primary. And he told the leaders of the Democratic Party that the court would hold them personally responsible.

Adesoji Iginla (52:09.558)
is a media.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (52:31.596)
for carrying out this ruling. George Warren said to them and had the press print it. He said, if that happens, cause some of the whites said that they were going to stop the blacks from voting. He said, if that happens, I'll put you in jail and you'll stay there for the rest of your life. These people have a right to vote and so they will vote. And after that, he became persona non grata.

Adesoji Iginla (52:59.156)
Unknown Grutter.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (53:00.674)
So much so that eventually the Warrens had to leave Charleston. They were so isolated. And when finally someone actually attacked them in their home, Miss Warren was sitting on a couch in their living room and someone threw a block of cement through the window. It almost hit her, but it didn't. Remember another story of someone's family getting a, yes.

Adesoji Iginla (53:27.894)
Yeah, Lorraine's Hansberrys.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (53:30.686)
Yes. And then when she went to get some letters mimeographed, the woman refused and said, please don't come in here because if you do, you're going to ruin my business. George Warren had all kinds of doors starting to close for him. And so he decided to move himself and his wife to New York City. And that is where he lived until he died in January.

and she died in November of that same year. And at his funeral, he was brought back to Charleston to be buried. He had 200 blacks at his funeral and only 12 white people. This is a man who had risen to the position of being a judge. And at his wife's funeral, there were no white people and only nine black people who were at her funeral.

Adesoji Iginla (54:16.362)
judge yeah

Adesoji Iginla (54:25.421)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (54:26.582)
But he had the last laugh because after he died in his will, he gave his retirement money to the College of Charleston and said that it has to be used for a black student to live on campus. Of course, at that time, no black students were allowed to go to that school anyway. But by 1976, black students were being admitted and his money went.

to funding education for black students at the Charleston University.

Adesoji Iginla (55:05.802)
The story you just recounted now of the man and his wife, how they walk together despite the personal attacks of the community on that family. You seem to have left out a bit of your life. Were you ever married or are we is it safe to assume that

You were a spinster all your life?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (55:37.07)
No, I married against my mother's wishes. I married a man I didn't even know. I guess maybe similar to the way my mother married my father without much courtship or knowing him well. And so there was a man who worked on the ships as well. And I met him a couple of times and one time we kissed.

and much to my mother's absolute dismay. And when he came back the next time, I knew my mother would not approve of him, but I married him anyway. That is where I got the name Clark from. And I moved with him to live with his family in North Carolina. And when I got there, I got pregnant. I had our first child.

who was born without a rectum, a girl, and she died a couple of weeks afterwards. And that was a very painful time. He was gone a lot because he would go on the ships. We subsequently had two more children, but after I moved into this community where his parents live,

Adesoji Iginla (56:39.01)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (57:05.418)
I found out that he was married and he had another woman that he had a long-term relationship with. He treated me very poorly and eventually I left my child with his parents and I returned to South Carolina to work.

and I sent money back for my child's well-being. But that is the story of my marriage and I never remarried after that.

Adesoji Iginla (57:40.332)
Bring it.

Adesoji Iginla (57:50.594)
So another question would be, whilst you were within the civil rights movement, how was the interaction between, because this seems to be a running theme, how the frictions between the genders, male and female, was there any such goings on whilst you were there?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (58:08.802)
you

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (58:17.234)
absolutely. You know, so we were doing the work under SCLC with the citizenship schools and making great headway. were, you know, our funders, if you will, were very pleased with the work we were doing. And there were some younger people who were assigned, like Andrew Young was supposed to be like the assistant in overseeing the citizenship schools. But it just seemed like the younger people were

more interested in the things that brought attention and not the quiet work that needed to be done in the background. That was the purview of the women. In fact, at one point I shared my opinion with Martin Luther King, Reverend Dr. King. I didn't criticize him, but I did ask him not to lead all the marches.

Like other black ministers, Dr. King didn't think too much of the way women could contribute. I think that is something passed down from being Baptist preachers because in the SCLC, that was the power structure. And I think they brought that same structure they had in the churches where women work but are not seen, don't speak. They brought that to the civil rights movement. And I think that not paying attention to the contributions of women and

Adesoji Iginla (59:32.014)
And today's civil rights movement.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (59:43.37)
allowing women to really have a voice was one of the weaknesses of the civil rights movement, the way the men looked at women. I think that the work the women did during the time of civil rights is what really carried the movement along. The women carried forth their ideas. And I think that the civil rights movement would never have taken off if some woman hadn't started to really speak up like Ella Jo Baker. We had a different way of doing things, but

We talked about these issues and we knew that there were a lot of issues. So I had some, you know, issues with some of the men. In fact, Ralph Abernathy was particularly disrespectful. You know, I was the only woman on the board, the executive council, and I was there because I headed up.

Adesoji Iginla (01:00:37.954)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:00:40.118)
the citizenship schools. And every time we would be at a meeting, it just irked him to no end that I was there. And he would always ask, why does she have to be here? Well, because of the work I do and the expertise that I bring. But he was very, very condescending. Of course, we know, or at least history has it, that he was also very jealous of Dr. King. And he and his wife acted out quite often. But there were, so you had the male-female issues.

Stokely Carmichael, God bless his young soul, was quite the firebrand. He was also very disrespectful to women. In fact, at one point he said the only position for women in SNCC and the civil rights movement was prone. In other words, on their backs. Yes, he actually said that out loud for other people to hear, but this was the kind of disrespect that we received.

Adesoji Iginla (01:01:28.637)
on their backs.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:01:38.292)
And Ella Jo Baker was very upset about this and would speak up about it. But there were also other issues beyond the patriarchy and the misogyny, if you will, was also the class issues. I remember one time I was invited by Ella Jo Baker to an event where Coretta Scott King was going to be speaking and

Adesoji Iginla (01:01:51.224)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:02:05.984)
I think I was also going to make a few remarks and the wife of the pastor of the church where the event was going to be held had met me before at the Highlander School and she actually made a trek of 12 miles to where I was just to ascertain that I had a black dress and I had a dress, a black dress with lace in front that was befitting of

an audience with Coretta Scott King, you know, with all her, you know, pill box hats and all of these finery and things. And I thought that was absolutely ridiculous. I was quite insulted by it. And when I finally met Coretta Scott King, you know, we were in the receiving line and she comes through, I was like, there's really nothing.

That amazing. I could not see what the fuss was about, but there were definitely class issues. There was mismanagement of funds within the civil rights movement. You know, at one time we used to pay people, cover their expenses to come to the location where the citizenship schools were, right? To the major training. And we wanted to make things easier for people to be able to make that commitment to come.

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:08.046)
Hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:26.68)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:03:31.884)
So we would pay their fare and we would pay to feed them and of course provide for them while they're there. Well, this man just needed $6 and they were dragging their feet about sending that. But the same people who made that decision made a decision to charter a private plane to fly themselves.

in because they were late for a meeting. And so there were some rumblings and concerns about some of the lavish lifestyles of some of the people who were being paid through the monies that were being raised by sympathetic people. And at some of these events, there were parties in hotel rooms and...

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:05.378)
Hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:19.414)
from ordinary people.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:04:31.476)
lot of drinking and smoking and even some women showing up. You can go in and look at what happened in Oslo when Dr. King went to receive the Nobel Prize. He went with an entourage and some members of that entourage got up to some, let's just say, unprintable things, yes. But yes, so.

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:46.571)
Yeah, there's no better price,

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:55.574)
Enterprise in activity.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:05:00.5)
My work primarily with the citizenship schools, I think was a crucial aspect of the success of the civil rights movement because of the way we were able to educate and galvanize masses of people. And then they were able to register to vote, which could then turn the tide on a lot of the things that we were trying to accomplish. But they could also fight for other rights within their.

Adesoji Iginla (01:05:18.839)
Hmm

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:05:29.292)
their communities as well. And I think that is the reason why I was called the Queen Mother, if you will, of the civil rights movement, yes.

Adesoji Iginla (01:05:31.68)
Hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (01:05:41.55)
Okay, so we're almost coming to the end. So one question would be, in light of what has happened with the recent election of you know who, would you say, yes, we might not have a physical space to have the citizenship schools like we used to? What about co-opting the modern day technology?

in the pursuit of those similar, I mean, first and foremost, you have to have an umbrella body of people who have that blueprint in mind and be able to facilitate doing online activities where that constitution will actually still be studied. And then in the course of that, get people in position to actually maybe then challenge, make some much more structural changes with regards to

the place that is the United States? Or am I thinking too...

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:06:43.906)
That is precisely, no, is precisely why we have these conversations. That is precisely why we go back and I encourage you to study not just me, but other people because there's so much to learn that we have forgotten, so much to remember. And today I hear some people talking about a civics class and I'm thinking, been there, done that, we had citizenship schools. And yes, you're absolutely right. With the technology that exists today,

There's so many ways that you can do it that, you know, cut down even on some of the hardships with travel and all of that. But I will caution that it is so important that you do not continue this path of elitism. If you're going to implement this, it should be something that is taught and is open in such a way that whether a person finished high school or got a PhD, they can come.

They can learn and they take the same structure and they go back into their communities. Let me tell you, one of my criticisms of the young people in the civil rights movement is they would just come into a community and we're going to tell them what to do because we have the ideas and this and that. No. When you go into a community, you get quiet. You observe.

Adesoji Iginla (01:07:49.549)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:08:09.76)
You integrate with the people. You let them tell you what their issues are. You let them think through what their solutions are. And then you may add and try to enhance that thinking. But you don't just come and impose your ideas on them. But the other thing that we saw that was very helpful in bringing the leaders out of their communities and bringing them to a central place

for the training is that allowed them to see things they hadn't seen before. Remember when I first went to the Highlander School, I was experiencing things I hadn't seen before. It changed my thought process. So just even that, yes, you can use the technology, but there is a place for people traveling. So many people never leave. They never leave within 20 miles of where they were born or where they were raised. And so people just...

Adesoji Iginla (01:08:39.598)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:09:08.278)
maybe having to get on a bus and seeing things differently or on a train or on a plane or getting into a car opens their perspective. And then when they come into this place where there's so many people from different walks of life, then it makes them stronger as leaders. They definitely have a broadened perspective.

Adesoji Iginla (01:09:25.838)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:09:36.832)
We can do these things again. We need citizenship schools again. We should never have stopped because the schools are not educating our people to be active citizens. And that's what we did. We educated people to open their eyes to things that they thought, well, this is always how it has been. So that's always how it will be. And to understand that they could challenge those things, they could problem solve, they could solve their own problems. This same idea.

Adesoji Iginla (01:09:56.27)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:10:06.006)
would be helpful in the diaspora and in Africa. Instead of looking for other people to come and solve your problems, we have these conversations amongst ourselves and we teach ourselves to solve our own problems. There's so much that could be done that could be built on what I and some of my, you know, the comrade people I interacted with, what we built and established.

but your generation has forgotten.

Adesoji Iginla (01:10:39.104)
Yes, on that call to add note of which I would say it's a call to action and one other thing is I noticed the books that are written about

the likes of yourself and people that don't similar work have been written or penned by people that don't quite look like you. How do we counter that? Because effectively that's someone telling your story. I mean, your final thought on that. Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:11:14.72)
Well, know, first and foremost, write your own story. I wrote a book called Echo in My Soul. I wrote that book before I actually even started my work with the citizenship schools. And then later, I also...

have this book it's called Ready From Within, a first-person narrative. Now this one it was a lady, a white lady who interviewed me and then of course she chose what to focus on and what to put in here but it was my voice, my words. There is a long interview of me. You can actually hear my voice. I want to say

Adesoji Iginla (01:11:37.196)
Ready from within.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:12:04.198)
what was the school? It's available where people can go and look it up and download it and all of that. But that was a project that I did because, again, another white woman came to interview me, but it's my voice and you hear me tell a lot of my stories. But if you Google it, you should be able to find.

which organization that is. It's called Documenting the American South. And it's an interview with me that was conducted in 1976. So wanted to share that with you. for the people who are honest when they write books about the civil rights movement, you will also find some information about me. There's this book called The Book of African American Women.

and 150 crusaders, creators, and uplifters. They have a chapter about me. It's written by Tonya Bolden. You also have this book, not written by a Black person, but remember that in the work that I did, a lot of that work actually was financed by good White people. And like I told you, I had a good relationship with Judge Warren.

And so I'm not opposed to working with people as long as they have good intentions and they are working towards that common liberation. So this book, Freedom's Teacher, The Life of Septima Clark, quite thick, gives a little bit more information about me. I do want to share this, and I will share some other books really quickly. I know we're going to wrap up. One of the things I did

in the SCLC and throughout my life was I mentored my younger colleagues. My goal was to replicate, not myself, but to replicate what we were doing, because each person is an individual, right? And there was a young lady who had trained under me who got very discouraged about the lack of response in her community as she was trying to get more people to come and be part of the citizenship school.

Adesoji Iginla (01:14:12.142)
Chup, chup.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:14:28.556)
that she was teaching. And so she turned to me for advice. And she had a concern about even how quickly the adults were learning and about broken verbs. And this is what I said to her.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:14:51.506)
Now I am deeply concerned about broken promises and in all my work and participation with civic organizations, the broken verb participant never becomes the broken promise participant. In other words, what she was saying is look beyond the class schisms, those chasms.

Don't worry about whether they speak the English quote unquote properly. They got to have all the verbs in place because these are ultimately the people who are really the grassroots and they are the ones who go out and protest and riot. It's not the people in suits. The people in suits, the elites only show up when the cameras are there and then they come in front, but they're usually not the ones.

Adesoji Iginla (01:15:23.512)
properly.

Adesoji Iginla (01:15:39.586)
The elite.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:15:47.136)
getting the beat down, you know what I'm saying? And so she said, look beyond the class chasms, or I said to Ms. Cotton, look beyond the class chasms to find the potential in grassroots folk. Because the people who were breaking promises to me and to the people were typically not the ones with the broken verbs. It was the ones who spoke so well,

Adesoji Iginla (01:16:13.614)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:16:16.168)
and could rouse an audience with their oratory, but after that would walk away from the real work that needed to be done. And that's how I felt about it. So, Freedom's Teacher, there's also a book by Joanne Grant, Black Protest, History, Documents and Analysis, 1619 to the Present. She's got some really good information in here about me. And of course, David Garrow's book, Bearing the Cross.

which is about Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference has quite a bit of information about me and my work. And of course I previously shared Parting the Waters. But yes, many of the well-written civil rights books will include some information on citizenship schools, even though they did not really recognize and acknowledge me for the most part when I...

when I worked in that formation. But I would say that today there are many ways that I have been recognized in Charleston and South Carolina and beyond. And I look for that recognition not to brag or anything because my father was a very simple man who also taught me to not seek after that kind of adulation. But it was really about

Adesoji Iginla (01:17:41.077)
Glory.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:17:43.712)
the work that was done and the work that we must continue to do.

Adesoji Iginla (01:17:49.934)
We're going to have work we must continue to do. We'll continue this series next week. And you care to tell them who we're talking about next week?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:18:01.834)
this is going to be a really good one. Mary Jean Lamontere. I think I'm saying her name right, but we would have it right. Lamontere. So yes, if you've never heard of her, you definitely want to come. And we definitely encourage you to continue to leave comments, to continue to share this. There's so much to learn from people like me and more.

Adesoji Iginla (01:18:08.714)
Yeah, Lamazeer. Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:18:29.418)
And what we don't learn, we end up suffering from really. I do not believe that African-Americans would be where we are today if we had continued the work that I did. I think that we would be in a much better place. But I was also never one to just despair or to just wring my hands and feel like I needed to give up.

Adesoji Iginla (01:18:41.646)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:18:58.014)
I never got discouraged, which is why even after I got fired after 40 years in a school system, I went and I reinvented myself, so to speak, and I continued the work that needed to be done.

Adesoji Iginla (01:19:12.898)
Well, thank you for coming through and the call to action to the people who are watching and listening is to share, like and subscribe and you know, each one bring one because the schools, citizen schools we've just talked about is essentially about empowering people to do the work. And so if you bring someone in, you're empowering them to not only remember

but also to take the story to the next person. And so, Ms. Clark, thank you for coming through. And from me, until next week, it's good night for now. Good night.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:19:57.516)
Good night, everyone.