[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

JACQUELYN HALL:

. . . what your parents were like?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, my name is Septima Clark, and I was born in Charleston, South Carolina, May 3, 1898. My mother and father lived at that time on Wentworth Street, and the house is now bought by the College of Charleston. In 1904, I can remember, we moved to 17 Henrietta Street, and there I must have been about six years of age at that time, and I started going to school. I went to what they called Mary Street School, and at that school they had what they called at that time an ABC gallery where the children of six years were placed. There must have been a hundred children on that gallery; it was like a baseball stadium with the bleachers. You sat up on those bleachers. And the only thing I could see the teachers could do was to take you to the bathroom and back. By the time she got us all to the bathroom and back, it was about time to go home. We didn't learn too much, and my mother was aware of that so she took me out of that public school, and there were numbers of elderly women in Charleston who kept little schools in their homes. And so I went to one on Logan Street, where the Fielding Funeral Home is today. And at that school, run by a Mrs. Nuckels, I learned to read and write. And she taught us a very hard way. If you couldn't spell a word that she asked you, why, she whipped every letter in your hands. This was the way we learned to spell.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Could we go back a little bit, and tell me what your father's name was and what your mother's name was?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

My mother's name was Victoria Warren Anderson Poinsette, and my father was Peter Porcher Poinsette. My mother was reared in Haiti.

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As a little girl, she lost her mother, and her brother was working down in Haiti as a cigar sampler, and he took the three young children who were left when the mother died down to Haiti with him. So my mother then learned to read and write; the English in Haiti did a better job than was done by the slaves in South Carolina.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Where had she lived? She lived in Florida before she went to Haiti?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No, she lived here in Charleston.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh, she did. She was born in Charleston.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes, born in Charleston and lived in Charleston before she moved to Haiti.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you know anything about her mother and father?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

I had a picture of her mother, and her mother was a part of an Indian tribe here. It must have been Indian and black mixed together.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You don't know what Indian tribe it was?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

It was one of the offshoots of the Santee Indian tribe, as I understand.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was her name?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

I didn't know my grandmother's name. And although we had a picture of her, I really didn't know her name.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about your mother's father? Did you know anything about him?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No, not anything. I never did hear anything about her father.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was she very young when her mother died?

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SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes. They must have been something like six, four, and two—there were three girls—at that time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did she ever talk about growing up in Haiti, any stories unknown ?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Quite a bit. She talked about learning to read and write down there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

In the public school?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, I wondered whether it was a public school or not, but whatever school it was, she boasted that she was never a slave; she was a free issue, and so she never had to go through the regulations of a slave. She never worked in the field at all, so evidently they had a different life from that of my father.

JACQUELYN HALL:

She was born when, in 1872?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

She died in 1961 at the age of around ninety, so she must have been born somewhere. . . . She got married in 1890. I never tried to figure out, you know, the exact year that she was born. But it was quite some time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did she talk about this uncle that she lived with?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Her brother.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Her brother. He was a cigar sampler?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes, a sampler.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What does that . . .

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, they had a cigar factory down there, and after the cigars were made they had to sort of unknown they examined them to see that they were all right before they went on the market. And put on the band. I don't remember the name of the

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cigar that they were working on.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I think I remember you saying in your book that her brothers were very light-skinned?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

The one that she lived with was what they called of a Creole complexion. But I saw him. I can remember him, because, after so long a time, after she'd married and come back to Charleston, I went down to Jacksonville, Florida, and this is where he was living, down in Jacksonville.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I wondered if she had white ancestors that she knew of or talked about.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

The only thing she talked about was the Indian part of the family. But she had a sister who was very fair. Well, her mother, I understand, had three sets of children, and there were three of them that were pretty fair and three of them that were brown-skinned and then three of them that were sort of a ginger color but not very dark.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Three different men?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes, it must have been.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about your father's background?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, my father, I understand, came over on the ship Wanderer to some part of Georgia. And slaves were portioned out in many parts of South Carolina and Georgia.

JACQUELYN HALL:

The slave trade wouldn't have still been going on when he . . .

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Not as I know of, but somehow or other they came from one of the Bahama Islands, and it must have been that his mother must have been brought to the Bahamas and from the Bahamas to Georgia and from

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Georgia into various parts of South Carolina. That's the way I understood it. And I remember a brother of his who went out West when they had the gold exploration out there, and he was a very fair man. I met one in New York City, and he was brown-skinned. My father was dark-skinned; you can tell by that picture. So they were really very mixed.

JACQUELYN HALL:

These were his brothers.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes, they were his brothers.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did he and his brothers all grow up on the same plantation?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No, they were all scattered.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But they knew each other?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

They knew each other, yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about his parents? Do you know anything about them?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

I heard of his mother, but I never did know whether he came over from the Bahamas as a boy, or his mother was pregnant at the time. And I knew of a sister that he had, and she was a Schein, and she settled in Monks Corner. Some of her grandchildren or greatgrand's are around today. One is in New York. But I never heard him speak of a father, not at all.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And as far as you know, his mother was not on the plantation with him where he grew up.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No, she wasn't there. No.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was her name, do you know?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Maggie. It was Maggie Schein when I knew her.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you know his mother?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Unh-uh.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When you knew of her.

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SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

I knew of her.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And he grew up where, then?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

It's on the Joel Poinsett plantation. It's near Georgetown, South Carolina and on the Waccamaw River, as I understand, above the Wando.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And Joel Poinsett was the inventor of the poinsettia, and he was a Unionist.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes, and gave the poinsettia his name.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did he fare in the South just before and during the Civil War, as a Unionist? Did you ever hear any stories about that?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes, I read some, and it hasn't been too long, when this guy Sam Slate, who's writing a book on Joel Poinsett, came in—that was just a month ago—from Connecticut, and he sent me a book called Satan's Corner, and it talks about Joel Poinsett. But they unknown that, although there were slaves on his plantation, that he was a very non-violent man and had wonderful ways of working with the slaves.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did your father say that?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, my father never found any fault with him whatsoever. In fact, he didn't find any fault with any white people at that time; he was just that way. The reading and writing that he didn't get didn't bother him. He just talked about taking these kids to school and not ever being able to go in and learn to write his name. But he didn't feel worried about that, either. And he sat outside all day long with the horse until they came out of school, but not once did he go in their classroom. But it didn't bother him.

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JACQUELYN HALL:

Did he talk very positively about Joel Poinsett or about the white people at that time?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What kind of things did he say? When he told you stories about the slavery days, how did he talk about it?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, I can remember this one in particular. That's right, his mother was there; his mother died on that plantation. And he told about his mother dying, and he said that they put the body in that little. . . . They stayed in this little shack all night long until they could get somebody to make a coffin, and then at night they went by night to bury it, through the woods. They didn't have time in the day. And they got back before sunrise and went right back to work. But he still didn't say it in a violent tone, but this is what they did. I can remember him talking about that. He said that they lighted these flambeaus and went through the woods singing, and how they would sing while they were working to tell the people where they were going to be that night. That's the way they did it. That's the way they sent the message.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What would they sing, I wonder?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, they would sing something about "Way down yonder by the cornfield," and that would let the people know . . .

JACQUELYN HALL:

That there was going to be a funeral.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

. . . that there was going to be this funeral and where it was going to be, in the woods by the cornfield.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did he say that Poinsett never whipped his slaves?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

He didn't say that. He was amused at some of the people who

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had to get whippings. It sort of amused him, I guess, as a boy to see a man wincing and receiving a whipping. And he said they got that because they would steal. I guess they wanted some of the food from the bake-house, is what he said. And sometimes, he said, the cook would put a key out on the outside, and they would get this key and go into a smokehouse or one of the houses where the food was stored. And when they were caught, they got a whipping.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And he thought that they deserved it.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes. It amused him to see them wincing and getting whipped.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why would that amuse him?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

I guess the antics of the slave, and actually not knowing really what it meant, that those people's freedom were being taken away from them.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was his work?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

To take the children to school and back.

JACQUELYN HALL:

That was the main thing that he did?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

That was the main thing he did while he was there. And then when the Civil War came, he took water to the soldiers who were fighting to keep him a slave, to fight against the people in the harbor who were coming to free him. He really felt that it was perfectly all right. And carrying wood to stoke the cannons to shoot the balls at those ships.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, what did he think when emancipation came?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

"There was a turning to my mind" in his thinking, because he claimed that lots of people cried because they didn't know that they were going to be able to have any food. And they only thought of that

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paternalistic life that they had, where they were furnished food and that one piece of cloth that covered their body. This is what they told me. And I can't remember the name of that thing that they used to make to cover them, and that's all they had. A man would bring up some cloth, and each one would get a piece and just cover them with whatever, that little shirt thing that they wore; this was all that they had. Well, a number of them felt that they wouldn't have this any more, and so he said they really cried. But there were always some people who were against this thing. There were some people on the plantation who had a different way of thinking, but he never sided with any of them. unknown Dinmont Leasey would not have been a friend of his, because he didn't have that kind of a feeling

JACQUELYN HALL:

Had he ever heard of Dinmont Leasey?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Not as I know of. But I'm just using him, because he could see what was happening. But Dinmont Leasey had had some experience away from plantations, you know, and I guess that helped him. My father had such a. . . . Well, I guess they had Christianized him. Joel Poinsett never had any children. He married late, and he married a woman whose name was McGuire. And she had children. Those were the children that he worked with all the time, taking them to school and bringing them back to the plantation. He was one of the house servants—they used to say "house natives"—and they felt themselves so much better than those who worked in the field. He didn't work in the field. So when slavery was over, he found a job working on a ship.

JACQUELYN HALL:

In Charleston harbor?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

In Charleston harbor, but he went down into the West Indies

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and Savannah, Florida, and other places that the ship went. And that's where my mother met him, down in Haiti, on a ship, and then they came to Jacksonville and they got married in Jacksonville and came back to Charleston to live.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you mean by saying that he had a change of mind or a turn of mind?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

When we were children, the one thing he wanted was for us to have an education. This was the only thing that I know he would whip you for, if you didn't want to go to school. And there were times we didn't want to go. That's the only time I can remember getting a whipping from him. Because I cried one morning I didn't want to go to that school, and so he whipped me with a strap and then took me down there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He never complained about not having an education himself?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But . . .

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

After the First World War and the government started paying him checks, and how he got that job, a sister of Joel Poinsett's wife wanted him to have a job, and so he became a custodian at the first USO that was opened here on King Street. And when he became a custodian there, they paid him in checks and he had to sign his name or make the "X", and that's when he got down and learned to sign his name, but that was quite some time. Because they had had eight children by that time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did he ever talk about Reconstruction, about the violence in the Ku Klux Klan and the things that happened during the Reconstruction

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period at all?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

It never seemed to have bothered him whatsoever. He talked about the fightings, but it never seemed to give him any great worry whatsoever.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So that he didn't vote, for example, during the Reconstruction period or try to exercise any kind of . . .

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No. And my mother always talked about that. She would say to him, you know, that "You can't see what's happening. You're just no good." Because he never felt that he could change unknown . Not at all.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Tell me a bit about your mother's nature. What was she like?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

She was haughty, very much so. She'd grown up in Haiti, and seemingly, in learning to read and write, she'd also learned something about the government. And she was against slavery, terribly so, and she just actually hated the name of it. She always claimed that she never was a servant, and she wasn't going to be one. Well, she was really the boss of the house, and everything that she said had to go. She was the person you really had to listen to, because she did most of the whipping. Yet, still, she washed and ironed at home, but she never felt as if she could go out and work. And she used to boast about "I never gave a white woman a cup of coffee" . . .

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh, really?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

. . . because she felt that that would make her a servant. Vegetable carts used to come through the street, and she would never go out of her door to go to the wagon to purchase vegetables. Not her. That was not the culture of a lady. You'd sit in your door—they had

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these littlewell-holes, like, on the steps—and the man brought the vegetables in to her, and she'd choose what she wanted, and then they went back out unknown . And she always wanted somebody—like you say "Jacquelyn" ;no—put a handle to her name. She was always wanting people to say "Miss" or "Mrs." In speaking to us about my father, she just said "your father" or "Mr. Poinsette". She had been trained that way, and this was her training. But I really appreciate her courage, because, in the days when segregation was very great, she had courage enough to speak against it to us. We lived on a street that was integrated, and there was an Irishman down the street who didn't want you to skate in front of his door. And so she would always have something to say about it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did she speak to him?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Right out to him.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What would she say?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

unknown just tell him that the street didn't belong to him. unknown He said, "Well, I paid for in front of my door." You had to pay for the paving in front of the door unknown . But she said, "That doesn't allow you the right to tell these children they can't skate past that door." But we were afraid of him, and when we got to his door we'd always slide around into the street and go on. [laughter] unknown didn't like

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was it common for the streets to be integrated at that . . .

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

At that time. Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When you were growing up?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

We had Italians and Irish on that same street, and Germans,

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all living in between.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did the children play with each other? Did black and white children play together?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No, unh-uh, as a rule they didn't. When the black children were out in the street playing, all of the whites or the others would be in their homes. And whenever the white children came out, why, the parents kept you away from them, too.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did your mother have any good relationships with her white neighbors, any friendly relationships with the whites and the blacks?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

I couldn't say yes. I know she didn't have. My father would speak to everyone, but my mother wouldn't. And there was a group of I guess they were either Germans or Irish right across from me, and they had a car out in the street and they sold this bootleg, and they would come and sit on our step, you know, and when people'd come up you'd see them going into this car, you know, selling the bootleg liquor from that car. I really didn't know what they were doing at that time. My mother didn't want them to sit on her step. I guess she understood what they were doing. And she would lock the door and then take some water and throw under the door, and they couldn't understand where this water was coming from. That's the way she did.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You mean she would wet the step and then go inside and lock the door?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No.

JACQUELYN HALL:

She'd throw it down?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Throw it underneath the door.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh, under the door.

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SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes. Throw it very quietly. Yes. They'd be getting up and looking, wondering where this water was coming from.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Amazing.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

She had this kind of unknown .

JACQUELYN HALL:

Can you think, were there other instances of confrontation that she had with whites or with the authorities?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, with a policeman. I think I told you, when our dog scratched the little boy's face and the woman called a policeman.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was it a white boy's?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

White boy's. We didn't have colored at unknown . And she told him that she didn't know where the dog was, and she'd put the dog up in the attic. And he wanted to know whose dog it was, and she says, "My daughter, and my daughter's dead," which was true. And he wanted to come in to look, and she refused to let him. She said, "Don't you put your feet across the sill of my door." She had a little saying. She'd say, "I'm a little piece of leather, but I'm well put together," "And if you come through here, something's going to happen to you." She meant that, too. She would fight if she had to.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did your parents keep a gun in the house at all?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No, not as I know of. I never had seen a gun there. Just that tone. [laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

Just that tone. [laughter]

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

And she had that tone she would talk with all the time, and people understood it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did she try to make her daughters into ladies?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Very much so. But she never could get me to be one. unknown all of that.

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JACQUELYN HALL:

What did that mean, to be a lady?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, it means never to go out without your gloves on, never to let anybody know what you are going for. She said, "If you're going downtown for a common pin, it's nobody's business." And you dare not holler across the street. You're not supposed to unknown across and say, "Hey, Sally!" or "Hey, Sue!" That's not the sign of a lady. And you never eat on the street. And if a neighbor down the street would say that they saw us coming through the street eating—and you could buy some peanuts for a penny, just a lot of peanuts, and there was a baker across there, you could get some cookies, and we'd get a big bag for a nickel—but if you ate that thing in the street and somebody told her, you got whipped. You shouldn't eat in the street; that wasn't the sign of a lady.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, what about the other people that lived in your neighborhood and went to your church and so on? Did these uphold these same standards, or did she think that the children you played with, for example, were a little bit beneath you or too rowdy?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Any child who would come from school with me, she would want to know, "Does your mother know that you're here?" "No." "Well, then, go home to your mother. You can't stay and play." And only on Friday afternoons could we play. All the rest of the afternoons you had to get your lessons. And then she had work cut out for you to do. She'd either have a tub of clothes ready for you to wash or the ironing board ready for you to iron. But you didn't have a chance to play in that street, not at all,

JACQUELYN HALL:

Only on Friday?

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SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Now in the summertime when daylight was a little longer, you could sit out on that step and maybe talk with each other, but we didn't run up and down that street unknown .

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was there a difference in what your brothers could do and what you could do?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes, much, uh-huh.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

When my brother came along, the one that's living here now, he could bring people into the house and play games with them that the girls couldn't do.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, she had a feeling, and this was her way of saying it, that you'll be attract to men. Men are here to ask, and women to refuse, until the proper time. And if you accept favors from men, men are going to mark you, and then you will be no good. She always said that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So even when you were very young, she didn't want you to play with boys?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No, no, not boys. My goodness, you never could play with the boys.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh, really? Even when you were very young?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Uh-huh. They came to play with my brothers, all well and good, they could play with them, but we would have something else to do in the house while your brothers played with them.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you know what that meant, that men would mark you?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes, she meant that they would want to have sexual intercourse.

JACQUELYN HALL:

But did you understand what she meant when you were a child?

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SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Oh, no, not in the beginning.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did she ever actually talk about sex as you got older? Did she tell you about sex?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes. There was a lady down the street from us. And I had a sister—she's dead now—but she really liked the boys. And the boys would bring her home from school and leave her at the corner. But if this woman saw her letting a boy bring her to the corner and she told my mother, she would whip her every time. She didn't want this. She was very strict when it came to things like that. And we went to our aunt's house every other week to play with her children. One week she'd tell you unknown if she offered you anything you could take it; the next week, you'd better not take it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

That was a sign of poor manners, to go and be hungry. She had those ways with her, and she kept them till she died.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And did she whip you a lot, often?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, she never whipped me too much, because I was very cautious of the things that I knew that she disliked. She didn't want you to say "Well" nor "What?" to her, so I had to be very particular about that. I tried to correct her one morning when she was telling her sister something, so she slapped my teeth out of the front of my mouth and made me wash it out with some salt and water and go right on to Sunday school. So I knew then how she was going to do. And that same night she wanted me to say "God bless Mama," and I wouldn't do it, so she whipped me again and put me into bed. She couldn't get me to say it; I just wouldn't say it. I quarrelled with her, and I wouldn't

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say it. But I learned from that, though, that it was best not to try to antagonize her. I also learned that. . . . I was on King Street. She used to walk us out—that was part of our vacation—she would take all of us, and we could walk down King Street to the Battery and back uptown on a Sunday afternoon. I saw a little white girl drop a bag of candy, and I started to pick some up. Boy, did she give me a spanking on the street.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh, really? Were you picking it up to help her put it back in the bag, or you were going to keep it?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

I was going to keep it, but I didn't have any idea. Because the little girl's mother was not going to let her have it, since it fell on the ground, and I was going to take it. And she knew that that would be an inferiority trait, and she whipped me unknown .

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you ever disobey her or try to get around. . . . You said that she never succeeded in making you into a lady.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you resist?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, when I got up and I finished high school and the USO was here, I went there one night from the school to work as a volunteer with the sailors coming in. And I met a sailor that I liked very much. And I was afraid to ask him to come home. But I invited him to church. And he came to church that Sunday, and he brought about six others with him. I was then a real woman teaching, but I still knew what was coming. So anyway after church I couldn't invite him in, neither could I ask him to any dinner, and I couldn't go anywhere with him. So I had to just make an excuse, and they had to go back to the ship. And when I

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Page 19

got home, why, she told me that all these sailors were considered terrible people, you know. And all these people sitting in our church and I'm sitting with them, that was an awful thing to her. She didn't whip, because I was getting too large then, but she gave me quite a tongue-lashing about that. And then when I got ready to marry and he came down to ask her about it. . . . But before that I was teaching at Avery here in the city, and he came one weekend. He spent a whole day coming and a day here and a day going back. And we sat on the porch in my house—that's all I could do—and I went to the train, there was a train not too far, with him. And when I came back, the blue from his blue shirt was on my white dress, and I was in for a terrible . . .

JACQUELYN HALL:

He had kissed you?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

. . . killing. [laughter] She told me a lot about that, that it surely wasn't a lady to do a thing like that.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Had you had any boyfriends before him?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes, I'd had some, but they were people of Charleston, and they were all right because she knew them. So when I got married, she was very angry about it—I got married when I was teaching at McClellanville—because she said, "You're marrying a man you don't know," because anybody out of the state was somebody that she didn't know. And so that was a terrible thing to do.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I really wondered when I read your book about where you got the gumption to marry this stranger. [laughter]

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

That's right.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What made you do that?

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Page 20

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, I always say that there's a time in your life when you're just moved to say no. And this was the time, and my mother, everybody was in it but unknown and unknown . My father was really different. He felt different about it, but he dared not speak out, either, because she would have jumped down his throat if he had. And my in-laws came down here to visit me one time, and my mother wouldn't fix. . . . I had a child then, two of my sons, little, and they came down one Christmas, and you know, I had to take them out all the time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

She wouldn't fix dinner for them or have them eat anything?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did she think that they were beneath her in class or just that they were strange?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Very much so. I know she did.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What about class divisions in Charleston when you were growing up? Where did you and your family fit into that class division?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, because my mother was a washerwoman and my father was a slave, I couldn't go to any of the parties that were given by the upper-class people in Charleston, the middle-class people who had money and whose mothers didn't have to work. And the only way I went to school was because I took care of the lady's children, and she paid the dollar and a half for me a month to go to school, so I was considered, you know, beneath them, and I could not go to any of the parties. And then after I left here and went to Columbia, South Carolina, I knew the city doctors' wives, and the domestic workers all sat around at the table and played bridge. And that was

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strange to me, because they didn't do it in Charleston. Charleston and New Orleans, I found, had the class and caste system, and mostly they wouldn't. . . . And when I spoke out and said that I was a member of the NAACP, the members of my sorority were very angry with me and would not have their pictures made with me. First, they wouldn't be able to have a job as unknown , and secondly, they felt that that was beneath them, too.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What kind of neighborhood did you live in? What was the class structure?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

I lived in a very mixed neighborhood. And there were three families that lived there that today I can consider as kept women. They had white husbands, beautiful children, never married, but they were on a high pedestal. The women didn't work, and they stayed behind closed doors and windows most of the time. One was a German lady, and she was having children for a fellow named Kellenbach and his people unknown around here. And she had two children, and I used to go over to her house sometimes. She was a sick woman for quite some time. And I can remember around the sixth grade, when I learned to read pretty well, I went over there and read the Bible to her, chapters of the Bible. And I saw her husband, the man that she was living with. And then we had another family who lived with an Italian man, and they had lots of children. They were Simmonses. And there was another family right beside me. But my mother never visited those people, and they never visited her. The children would speak, passing, but they never came to your house, and we never went to theirs.

JACQUELYN HALL:

It sounds to me like she was upholding very middle-class

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standards while living economically in the lower class.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

That's true. That's why she didn't want us to be on the public school galleries, because she wanted you to go to a school where you wouldn't mix with the unknown children that she didn't have enough money to unknown by.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Well, how did she feel about her own situation? Did she blame your father for not being able to support her better?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes. She said it all the time. She had a little song, and I can't remember the song she used to sing, but she'd say, "The clothes that I put over my head, I'll never put over again." That was one way.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did that mean?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

It meant that her status in life had changed by marrying, and she couldn't buy the kinds of things that she used to buy.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why do you suppose she had married your father? He was a poor sailor who had been a slave.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

I have an idea. Her youngest sister fell in love with a man who was the bricklayer. He had a trade. And she had been going with him. They called her "Tory" for Victoria, and one day, she said, her sister came to her and said, "Tory, I've got something to show you." And she had gotten a letter from this fellow, and he wanted to marry her. So he married her little sister. And I think that triggered her to feel as if "I want to marry", so she married the first person that came along. And I can remember all through life she talked about that man. She and her sister had many words about it, but the children, we became great friends.

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JACQUELYN HALL:

Were there conflicts between your mother and father over the fact that your father would not stand up to white people? What kinds of things would happen?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, when he received this little eight dollars a year, she would say to him, "Don't bring any of it here. Just go and buy you a pinch; that's all it's good for. If you can accept eight dollars a year for a pension, that's not worth. . . ." And I remember, too, it was a sad time. She lost a baby—it must have been eight or nine months—and there was no money to pay for the digging of the grave. And I had an aunt whose name was Eliza Poinsette. She was married to a brother of my father, two sisters marrying two brothers, and my mother had to get four dollars from this sister of hers to pay for the digging of this baby's grave. And she cried bitterly; she hated that sister, and she

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

JACQUELYN HALL:

a caterer all the time you were growing up?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Not all the time. For a while. And business didn't pan out to do too well. He was with another fellow named Brownie. They ran a little restaurant downtown, and then they catered at nights to big parties, but she knew they weren't able to make a living. Well, he had this USO job, two at a time, and those were the things that he did.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you remember other things that he did to make a living?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No, only catering and running that restaurant and custodian.

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He was a custodian at the USO.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did any of the children work?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

All of them.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Any of the brothers and sisters work for money?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Sure, we unknown work.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you do?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, my brothers used to carry the papers as little boys. They took papers in the morning and in the afternoon. And, as I said, I took care of a lady's two children that lived across the street from me. She was a dressmaker, and I took care of her children in the mornings and in the afternoons. She paid my tuition. And my sister, she went to a trade to learn to be a dressmaker, but she never did learn.

JACQUELYN HALL:

She never did learn? [laughter]

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Her mind was on other things, and she never did learn to sew. [laughter] And the little ones coming along, they profited from my work, because when I finished high school and took a state examination and started teaching, I could help the family.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes. Did you ever take in boarders? Did your mother ever take in boarders?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No. Had too many children.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you have any other relatives living with you?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No. There were eight of us, you know, and all we could do was to get them sheltered, and we never took in unknown .

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did you feel about your mother's strictness and harshness when you were a child?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Oh, we'd talk about it all the time. We got together and

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really panned her for that, but we wouldn't let her hear us. We didn't mind saying it before our father, and then he would say to us, "Everything she does, she's doing it for your good," which was so true.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What kind of things would you say, then?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

We'd talk about her not wanting us to play with other children; that was one thing. And we couldn't sit out on the steps, and on Sunday we dared not play. We only could sit on that porch. . . . We had an organ, and we could stand around the organ and one could play and sing, and those were the only things we could do while other children could be out playing ball or things like that. But we couldn't. If the teacher would tell her anything about us not getting our lessons you dare not talk back unknown , and we talked about that quite a bit. And she would go over the lesson with you to see that you got your lesson before you make a mistake. Another thing, she took her time to tie up little packages of lunch for you to take to school, a sandwich and a piece of fruit or something like that. And she'd stand by the door to see if you would open this thing before you would get. . . . And we would wait till we were around the corner and start eating.

JACQUELYN HALL:

[laughter]

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

And if somebody told her, well, you really got a whipping.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you feel much closer to your father?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you like your father better than you did your mother?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

I did. Now I don't think that. . . . My sister up here, I always say to her that she stayed in the bed with my mother so long

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that she's my mother all over.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Is that right?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

She doesn't see changes in people, she always figured that "If I can do a thing, you can do it." So she's more to me like my mother than anybody else. But I never could go along with her in many things, although I couldn't come out and say it to her because she would really get me unknown . I knew that I couldn't . . .

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you want to be like your father rather than . . .

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

More so, yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was he like? What did you admire about him?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

His easygoing way and his wonderful non-violent spirit of not wanting to unknown . And I liked the idea, when I got sense enough to know, of him wanting me to learn to read and write. See, he couldn't; unknown .

JACQUELYN HALL:

How did it make him feel when your mother talked about the way that he couldn't support her?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

When she would say things like this to him, most of the time he would say, "Vicky, a hundred years from today you'll never know the difference, and none of those things will make any sense." And he was so right.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Do you think it really didn't bother him?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes, I think it bothered him. I think it bothered him because he couldn't get the kind of money that would have helped him to support his wife better. And I understand that they used to, in the early days, go out and go to parties and things, and she was a great dancer and that they had good times. And then after all these

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children came, she never did go anywhere. For a long time she didn't even want to go to church, because she didn't have the kind of clothes that she wanted to wear.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How do you know that it bothered him? Did you have a sense of how your father felt?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes. I think that, sitting down, reminiscing quite a bit, he would talk about the things that he used to do, and he would wonder about "When will we ever be able to do these things again?" And if he didn't have money enough to buy a number of things that we needed, he would talk about he hated that. So I knew that he felt the fact that he wasn't able to make the kind of money that he needed to make. I can remember her singing those blues so well, talking about the things that she had, she'd never have anymore. She hated it very much. But she did get to the place where she could have everything that she wanted. And my brother got up and was working, and I was working, and there were two others teaching. And I bought a house and I had it repaired, down on Henrietta Street, and the night that we had the opening, oh, she was most jubilant. A lady came and took her out to a movie, and when she came back all these people were there. And it was her birthday, October 25th; I never will forget it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What year was this?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

It must have been '48, just about, because I came back in '47. And that was in 1948. And she just threw her arms around me and said, "Nice, nice to do this." [laughter] I was happy, too.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And was this the house that the two of you lived in together?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes. And my sister came from New York for that party, and

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we had a big party. unknown actually, and had unknown the walls all done over, and put a room on downstairs so she wouldn't have to climb steps, for her bedroom and put a bathroom back of it. That's what I did when I was able to. After the teachers' examination my salary was tripled, and I got my master's degree in '46, and then after that I could use my money to buy a home. I tried to buy a home before but I was making too little, and the man wouldn't unknown . So my brother, who was working at the time, took it over, and when I came back in '48 I was able to pay him off and have this house and have it repaired, painted and all. She was too happy, but I was hoping that my father could have been alive. I would have liked for him to have been there at the time. But he was gone. He'd gone

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did your mother think when you began to get involved in civic activities and NAACP?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

She hated that. Judge Waring and I were great friends—you've heard of Judge Waring.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Yes.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

And Mrs. Waring came to my house. And the neighborhood had changed, and there were a lot of people who had moved in from the country coming in to the small towns. And they said the reason why we were having a lot of trouble was because of what I was doing, you know, having white people come to my house. And my mother didn't like it too well, either. And so Mrs. Waring came one day, and she just refused to see her. She went into her room and stayed in there. And then I was speaking at the YWCA, and I was Chairman of the Committee on Administration. That must have been in '48, too; it

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was right after I fixed this house. And Mrs. Waring was the speaker, and most of the white people in Charleston did not want Mrs. Waring to speak. Judge Waring had divorced his wife of thirty years, and she was the wife now. And that was really much against the white people downtown, because they came out at the funeral and said that they didn't mind him opening the primary, but the idea of marrying a Yankee woman, that was a terrible thing. So she spoke that night, and my mother went to that program. And I was sitting up on the stand; I sat with Mrs. Waring. And she was real nervous. She thought somebody would shoot her in the window , you know, for this book. There was much controversy. But we had placed some men by the switches, so that if anybody come I could easily to turn off the lights, you know, we had some men placed there, and the place was packed. And she gave her speech. And if they hadn't been so mean, I don't think she would have said so many mean things to them. But she called them decadent and lowdown and unknown . My mother was so nervous. She lost the use of her legs, and we had to take her out like this, bodily .

JACQUELYN HALL:

How do you account for that, after she had been so . . .

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Been so courageous. But all of this talk. The opening of the primaries to blacks and Judge Waring marrying this Yankee woman. That thing just got to her; she didn't like that either.

JACQUELYN HALL:

She didn't think he should have married a Yankee woman?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No, she felt that. . . . I think most everybody in Charleston felt that if he had gone next door and taken a woman, a Charlestonian, it would have been all right[laughter] But to take a Yankee woman. You know, that was all over the South? I went to a

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meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, and this woman stood up and she said, "I've been here seventeen years, but I'm still a Yankee, unwanted, but I'm going to speak about this integration anyhow." And she did. But they didn't like her . And that's the way it is. And today I notice that our League of Women Voters, you know who the members are? The wives of the Citadel professors, the wives of the naval base and the Air Force base, and very few of our downtown unknown . They just don't come, and the Kerristons, the Culnots, the unknown Condons, they won't become a part. No. See, the white women of the South were supposed to be up on a pedestal, and they didn't mix in things like that. They could see their husbands do it now, but they close their eyes to it, and that's it. This is the way they did. And so it hasn't gone yet.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Isn't that something?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

It's still like that. You don't speak out.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was the gossip that Judge Waring got involved with this woman, and that's why he divorced his wife?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Mm-hm, that was the gossip.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did his wife still live here in Charleston after he divorced her?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Oh, yes. She lives right around the corner. And Mrs. Waring said she would bring her dog to her house, the second Mrs. Waring, and curb her right in front of her door. She thought that was really something else, the way she did it. We have some funny times.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Charleston is an amazing place.

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SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Uh-huh. We certainly have some real funny times. And when Judge Waring's body came back here, we had two hundred blacks and about twelve whites at the funeral. And a man who had done so much.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When was that?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

He died the fifteenth of January, 1968, and he was buried about the twentieth.

JACQUELYN HALL:

In 1968, still the white community . . .

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No, they were still angry. But the papers came out and said they weren't angry because he opened the primary; they were angry because he had married a Yankee woman after divorcing a wife of thirty years. And one magazine that I have—I just got it here the other day—said that he just sat down and said, "Annie, I want a divorce." Now I wonder if he did a thing like that. I don't believe it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Mnm-mm.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

And I bought it for a dollar from downtown. This was out here this week on the Warings. And when Mrs. Waring's body came in November, her son and his daughter and her daughter and the woman who took care of her. . . . There weren't but nine of us at that funeral. Nine persons at Mrs. Waring's funeral. And the minister from St. Michael's. He was there at this time, and he was there at Judge Waring's funeral.

JACQUELYN HALL:

It's amazing.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

The hostility goes on, stays, and it passes down into the young ones, you know. But you have a group of young people now unknown . But, you know, that's not any different

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from black people.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How do you mean?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Because, with me, I was marrying a man out of the state, and it was somebody I didn't know, so all my people were against that. And there are numbers of people I met unknown . There was a Mrs. Genley down at Mrs. Waring's house. And her daughter had gone to school up in Maryland and met a fellow, a brown-skinned guy, down there; she was very fair. And her parents told her to get over that. They just hated it. Then we had another family up here, the Smiths, that were on Spring Street, had a big house. And that mother grieved herself to death because her son became a musician. She wanted him to be a doctor or a dentist or something like that. See, those were the jobs open, preaching, doctor, dentist. Never a lawyer, because he had no chance to. . . . They claimed the lawyer was a liar anyhow. So they never wanted anybody to be a lawyer. Those were black people who had that kind of feeling. And the Congressman Young unknown you know? I visited his mother's house. And she blamed the Reverend Enright, who died here this winter, from the Congregational Church. She blamed him for influencing her son to become a preacher. She never liked it because he was a preacher. And when he went to Howard to study, they cut off his allowance, and he said he took a job and worked. But he went up to the New England states there to get his master's degree in theology. And when he preached his first sermon up there, she came. And the people were so jubilant, and she changed somewhat. But I called her when he was working with Dr. King, and she said, "I can't feel happy, because I'm afraid he's going to be killed at any moment." He's still alive.

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And now when he was made a congressman I called her again, and she was happy, she and the father. They were real happy. And he preaches about them [laughter], about them and their middle-class ways.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh, really? [laughter]

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

He did it many times.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why didn't they want him to be a preacher? I thought that was a fairly respectable thing to do.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes, but they didn't want him to be a preacher. They wanted him to be a doctor like the father. And they said that preachers always live from hand to mouth, so they didn't want him to be a preacher.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Interesting. Well, let me get back to your schooling a little bit. You started the public and then were taken out and put in a little private school taught by a black teacher who had been educated during Reconstruction in the public schools?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Mm-hm.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And then you went on to Avery Normal School.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No, I went back to the public school in the fourth grade and stayed there till the sixth grade. We didn't have a high school in Charleston for black children, and in 1914 we got our first high school and it was really just a middle school, just that, the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. President Taft came down to the dedication of that school. This is Burke Industrial that we have today. And then I went there. And from the sixth grade I found out that I could take a test. I took a test and was able to go into the ninth grade at Avery, and that's what I did. I went into the ninth grade and started my high school work. Finished Avery in 1916.

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Before I finished I took a state department examination in the tenth grade, and I could teach if I wanted to from that. But my mother didn't want me to stop. She wanted me to get a high school certificate, so I went on. And Avery at that time gave something called a licentiate of instruction, which is equal to two years of college today, and I took that. I got that. And then I went over on John's Island in 1916 at the age of eighteen and started teaching.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What was Avery like?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Avery was a high school that was founded by the missionary women out of Massachusetts. They came down right after the Civil War and started the school for the blacks. And for a long time we felt as if we couldn't go to it, because we didn't have any money to pay that tuition. And I told you how I paid mine. So there weren't too many people of my status going to Avery. They were mostly the doctors' daughters unknown .

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were the teachers mostly New England women when you went there?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

All the teachers were white New England women, or were there men?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

All were white until 1914, and in 1914 they got a few black people to come in. There was a Mrs. Clyde. And they were down in the sub-normal department. But in the high school, in 1914 unknown . But in 1916 some black women came from the north. There was a Mrs. Wing, and there was a Miss Hamilton who taught Greek and came in. So 1914 or '15 was the turning point.

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JACQUELYN HALL:

What was life like for these New England women living in Charleston, teaching at a black school?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

We had one teacher who never would attend a white church, Mrs. Tuttle, and she would take her children. . . . We had a theater downtown—we called it the Opera House—and when the Smart Set and the Black unknown (those were old programs that came) she would take her children and sit up on the third floor with them. This is what they had to do. But she never would go otherwise. And she went to the Congregational church that was manned by a black preacher. And so she said she stayed in Charleston all of that time and never attended a white church. She did go to a Jewish synagogue, though, unknown . She went there to find out about some customs that she wanted to teach us. But most of the time they never went to anything.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Why?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Because, since we were segregated against, she felt that she could not go to these places herself.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What did you think about the teachers? How did they treat you?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Wonderful. They came to your home, regardless of what kind of a house you had, and talked with your parents. And they wanted me to go to Fisk when I finished. They came home, and my mother was willing to do it, too, but I just couldn't see her doing it. I thought she would have washed herself to death. Because the board at that time was about nineteen dollars a month, and I don't see where she could have. . . . We couldn't get a dollar and a half a

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month; I'm sure she couldn't get nineteen dollars a month plus the clothes to go and the transportation and all. So I didn't feel as if I could go. But they wanted me to go to Fisk University, initially.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Were these women teachers all unmarried? Were they all spinsters?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

All were, all that I knew. I didn't know of any one of them that was married. They were all unmarried, and they lived in the dormitory. Do you know where that Rice Business College is? Well, anyway, it's on B unknown Street. But there's a house right beside, and they all lived in that house together. Well, I guess there was a cook given by the American Missionary Association, and the school prepared the meals for them.

JACQUELYN HALL:

It's an interesting life that they lived, isn't it?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Mm-hm. And we would visit them, too, sometimes on Saturday and the like.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did you think that they were good teachers?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

I thought they were excellent. I really enjoyed my schooling at Avery. It was great to me. When I was on that ABC gallery at public school, if you fell asleep they whipped you. And I never did know of any of these teachers striking at all. And it was a great thing to me to be able to . . .

JACQUELYN HALL:

Now around World War I when they brought black teachers in, then there was a situation in which the city of Charleston forced them to fire the white teachers?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

What happened in that?

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SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

It seems like all of the people who had finished Avery got up in arms against it and went down to City Hall to protest it. But it had to be done.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Protest what?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

The firing of the white teachers. And sending them away. They didn't want that to happen.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did the city pass an ordinance or something?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes, against them coming in and staying and working with the black children. Because they still had the feeling that, you know, blacks and whites could not be together in the city.

JACQUELYN HALL:

As long as all the teachers were white and were teaching black children, they left them alone.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes. Because in all the public schools, you know, we had white teachers teaching black children. And we had to go to the unknown bat in 1919. And we went door to door, and that was my first real political thing. In 1919 we went door to door to ask people if they wanted black teachers to teach their children. Because the lawmakers said that only the mulattoes wanted these jobs, and they didn't think that the domestic workers and the chauffeurs and the garbage people and the longshoremen wanted black teachers. So we had to do a door-to-door thing to get black teachers to teach their children. And in 1920 we got them. And we didn't get the black principals, though, till '21.

JACQUELYN HALL:

When you were going door to door, were there people who did not want black teachers and who wouldn't sign the petition?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

There were some. Yes.

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JACQUELYN HALL:

On what grounds?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Well, they had the feeling that they didn't know. Of course, when you don't understand things, you are against it. And there were some who had the feeling that they wouldn't be worthwhile. They wouldn't get the kind of education that they felt they needed. But we did get ten thousand signatures in a day's time.

I did County Street from King to the river with some of my students. And some of them wrote on pieces of paper unknown to sign their names. This was all we needed, signatures.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you went to John's Island to teach then in 1916.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes. I was back at Avery in 1919.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And you taught at Promised Land School?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You talk quite a bit about that experience in your book, Echo in My Soul. One question that I had, though, is did you have any contact with or know anything about Penn School at that time?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Not at that time. I didn't find out about Penn School until I came back from Columbia, South Carolina. It was around 1940-something when I heard about Penn School.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I would have expected that people on the other islands would have known about Penn School, but I guess . . .

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Communication was poor, and transportation was more so. There weren't any bridges, and you didn't go from one island to another. It was hard. We didn't get a bridge till '45 to go over to John's Island, so that was the trouble. So they just stayed right in their little shells, isolated, accepting whatever was there.

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JACQUELYN HALL:

Right.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

There was a rickety bridge when I went over in '40-something to unknown , a wooden rickety bridge. And now they've got an excellent one there.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you taught for two years the first time.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No, '16 to '19.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Three years?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Uh-huh, I was there from '16 to '19. And then I went back from '26 to '29.

JACQUELYN HALL:

You mentioned in the book that the Superintendent came around to collect dues for the NAACP when you were living on the island?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

The supervisor of the negro schools, yes, when I was on . . .

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was that the first you had heard of the NAACP?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

First time I'd heard of NAACP at that time. And I thought it was such a wonderful organization and unknown .

JACQUELYN HALL:

It's interesting that there would be an NAACP on John's Island at that time.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

There wasn't.

JACQUELYN HALL:

There wasn't a chapter.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No. This was a meeting. This was the Presbyterian. . . . What do you call it? But it was the Presbyterian convention. And these preachers came from out of state and were holding this meeting on John's Island. And they told about the NAACP and what it was doing. It wasn't too long since their invention had been in Springfield, Illinois, in 1909. And they were trying to get groups organized. And this woman in Atlanta—I can't think of her name, a white woman in

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Atlanta—thought it was such a horrible shame that America would let a thing like this happen.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Jesse Daniel Ames?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

No, it was another name. She went to that falls in New York and started getting people together to unknown .

JACQUELYN HALL:

Oh, you're talking about the organization of the NAACP. Mary White Obington?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

That's it, Mary White Obington. And so she had some people who had been working with her. They came to John's Island. In their meeting there were some Presbyterians who had been from South America, and they were working in a church in Atlanta and they came over to John's Island. And that's how I heard of it. And when I joined, unknown it wasn't but a dollar a year. [laughter] And so the supervisor of negro schools here, a Mrs. Lesesne, she was so enthused, and she stood outside the courthouse door, and we came out with our money, and we put this dollar in a little parasol that she had. We didn't want anybody to see us putting it in, because it was detrimental to let people know what you were doing.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Now what do you mean, "outside the courthouse door"?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

There's a fireproof building downtown, and she stood . . .

JACQUELYN HALL:

Now you're talking about after you came back to Charleston?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Oh, yes. They were still "separate and equal." No, this was when I was on the island, not after I came back, because she was dead then. She stood right at the courthouse door, and as we went up and got our checks and got them cashed, we put the money in her pocket.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I see. You had to come from the island to Charleston to

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get your checks.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes, to get it cashed. We had a thing that we had signed by the trustees, and we came over to Charleston to get it cashed.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I see. And she would stand outside the door, and after the teachers cashed their checks. . . .

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did a lot of the teachers put the dues in?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes, quite a number of them joined, but they wouldn't say it, you know. But when this law was passed in 1956 that no city or state employee could belong to the NAACP, and Mrs. Lesesne was one of the main ones, you know, she died soon after that. I think she died before our poor child. It grieved her. She was one person who was a big member of the NAACP, and she couldn't take it. She just withered away and died.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did she deny her membership in the NAACP?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

She couldn't. That's why I think it worried her so.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Did she lose her job, or was she already retired?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

She would have lost it. No, she hadn't retired.

JACQUELYN HALL:

She would have lost her job, but she died before that unknown ?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes, she died before. She would have lost it, though. She would have went right along with us.

JACQUELYN HALL:

So you came back, then, and taught at Avery from 1918 to 1919.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes. Or 1919 to '20, something like that I think it was. It must have been the fall of 1919, into 1920.

JACQUELYN HALL:

And that's when, while you were teaching at Avery, you had your first organizational experience of going from door to door,

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getting petitions to have black teachers employed.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Mm-hm.

JACQUELYN HALL:

I was sort of surprised that the Board of Aldermen gave in so quickly to your request and begin hiring black teachers.

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Oh, that thing had been coming a long time, but we hadn't gotten to the place where we felt as if we could get the signatures before. And when Tom E. Miller, President of the State College, told us that we needed to get signatures, we had a black principal at Avery at that time. Mr. Cox had come from Nashville, Tennessee, and you can imagine the controversy we had about going out and doing this. It was hard for him to see it, too, but we decided that we would do it.

JACQUELYN HALL:

The principal was opposed to your doing it?

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK:

Yes. And so the older teachers wouldn't get into anything like that. But I didn't have many friends unknown . [laughter] And I took my students along with me, and we got these signatures. Some would be across the s